July 12-18, 2014

Little Manatee River SP

Wimauma, FL

Saturday-

Monte spent a good part of the day working on our bedroom slide. Even though we know to keep low when walking under the slide, every once in a while one of us forgets and stands up and sees stars.  OUCH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Monte marked the area on the wood he needed to cut out to square off in order to put in a filler piece.

 

 

He got his jig saw ready and cut out the piece he had marked off but he wasn’t able to get a clean cut.

So Monte switched to a circular saw and was able to get a much cleaner cut.

Next step was to cut a filler piece out.

 

 

Looks pretty good.

Last step for today was to apply the filler piece using Gorilla Glue.

Sunday-

Monte spent another day working on our bedroom slide.

First he used wood filler in the small area that he hadn’t been able to replace with a piece of wood. 

 

 

 

 

There is a two step process to prepare the filler.  Monte put a small amount from the large can of filler on a piece of board and then mixed in a small dap from the tube. 

 

Once mixed together, the filler hardens quickly so Monte had only a few minutes to get the mixture applied.

The next step was to sand the entire length of the slide.

After applying contact cement to the wood on the bottom of the slide, Monte rolled out flashing and applied a coat of the contact cement.

 

 

 

I helped him apply the flashing.

 

After he was satisfied he had smoothed out all the bubbles on the flashing, Monte applied contact cement to the remainder of the wood on the bottom of the slide.

 

Then the membrane was pulled up, cemented and the bubbles smoothed out before being secured with screws.

The head of one of the screws broke off.

 

Monte applied sealer to the molding.

After screwing the molding in place, he ran a strip of sealer along all the joints.

Of course the true test that the slide is now properly sealed will come with the next heavy rain.  Fingers crossed.

 

Nine years ago today our grandson Timmy was born.  He wasn’t “scheduled” to arrive until September.  BUT he decided he didn’t want to wait and pushed his way out into the world.

Timmy is bright, cute and very sweet. 

We weren’t able to celebrate the day with him but have plans for him to come spend a couple of days with us next week.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIMMY

Monday-

Monte asked me to come along for the ride as he went to check out some areas of the park to check for smoke after a lightning storm. 

We didn’t see any smoke but several of the trails were flooded.

 

 

 

 

After dinner I took a ride around the park in the club car.  I was disappointed that I didn’t see any deer.

Tuesday-

Monte took off on the tractor around 8AM to cut the grass on the trails. 

He returned within 30 minutes to change into long pants and a long sleeved shirt because he had been attacked by mosquitoes.

Originally Monte only planned on putting in a couple of hours cutting trails but decided to just get it over with and ended up putting in over seven hours.

After his shower I applied AfterBite to the bites on his back-I estimated there were at least a hundred of them.

Wednesday-

Monte had a rough time sleeping due to his mosquito bites.  He had planned on getting the rest of the trails cut but when he woke up this morning he said he didn’t want to go back out with the squeeters until he had a fighting chance.

  It ended up raining all day.  So while I had a very boring shift at the ranger station, Monte took the Jeep for an oil change and went shopping for a long sleeve shirt he could spray with Permethrin repellant. 

He also found a mosquito netting hat.

Thursday-

Monte geared up with his new Permethrin repellant treated shirt, mosquito netting hat, long pants, high shoes and gloves and began cutting trails.  When he returned home a couple of hours later after he had finished his mowing, Monte noticed the front loading bucket was not responding on the tractor.  Looking for the problem would have to wait until Monday because there were more pressing chores to attend to.

Last week the Dixie Chopper broke down.  The grass along the paved road in the park is getting tall with all the rain we have been having so when the parts were delivered fixing the chopper became a priority.

Monte spent the afternoon replacing idler pulleys, a power drive belt and rear band brakes. 

My shift at the ranger station was the usual rush of activity followed by long lulls of no activity.  The park manager told me it was okay to close the station an hour early.  I began my closing procedure a few minutes after 4PM.  But the ranger who was going to close me out and verify my paperwork didn’t come back to the station until 4:30.  He had been delayed because a rattlesnake had been spotted in the campground.

Monte went to the campground to investigate.  He said before the snake slithered off into the brush behind one of the campsites he noticed it had a large bulge from either a mouse or rat.  Luckily the site was not occupied so it was able to be taped off.  The campers were warned to be extra vigilant when walking the trail leading to the bathroom.

Friday-

We spent our day off with my mom and dad who came to visit at lunchtime bringing pastrami and a fresh rye bread. 

While dad took a nap, Monte drove me to my dentist appointment and dropped mom off at Bealls and then went to Home Depot.  Luckily all the places were in the same plaza.

We all met up again and stopped at Little Caesar’s to pick up a couple of hot and ready pizzas.