Hi All:
As the sun continues to shine CCV continues to dry out. How is it possible that apiece of ground that was mud 3 days ago now makes dust when you walk on it? Only yesterday the road between the Dining Hall and my place opened to vehicle traffic, still have a few cones out to ID the soft spots, but open. The parade ground is a mess and the flagpoles have a foot of mud covering the cement floor. Kevin and I started digging it out today, his idea, we got a third of it dug out.
To make Cherry a year round operation we need to address several thing. First I should say that the system we have evolved works great and meets the need of the average annual rain fall. Only when we receive more than 5 inches in 24 hours do we begin to tear up the soil. And if we have several heavy rains we find our ground water backs up and eventually inundates our Dining Hall, middle septic system, and Cook’s Housing. Adding an additional 10″ drain through the beach would drain out the salina quicker and prevent the ground water from backing up, as much. Installing culverts under the camp road in several places would prevent the road from being washed out and installing a larger culvert at the top of the canyon where the creek crosses the island road would help us maintain year round vehicle access. And as much as I hate to say it we would also benefit from some asphalt being put down in the administrative area, say from the top of the maintenance yard to just pass the existing Dining Hall.
In the mean time, we’ve began decking one of the campsites this week, have had all the residences interiors painted, completed the staff village restroom repair and deck improvement project, spend at least 3 hours a day on the tractor repairing the roads and creek, completed a small deck (back porch) on Mark’s place, and have begun our spring weed abatement and annual brush clearing program.
In the near future we will be addressing the following items. Mark will begin replacing all the vinyl pipe in my place with copper pipe. We will have professional installers over to camp to replace all the carpets and linoleum in all three residences. There still a lot of tree debris from the storm and we will be chipping it up as soon as we can take the grader off the tractor. One of the weekends in April we will have a team of professionals come in to camp and replace the dining hall septic lift station. With a few other items added to the list the camp is looking at a $50,000 plus repair. There is also a rumor going around about replacing a commissioner cabin soon.
The camp has purchased two medal-shipping containers for storage. They are 8’x20′ and are divided into two compartments with roll up doors on the side. I’m planning on putting them back to back on the lower end of the archery range, with a 8′ road on each side we would lose 32′ of the archery range, or about a third of it. What do you think?
Even though Mark and I are just short of being super men I should mention that we have hired an independent contractor who has done a lot for us. Now that the storm repair work is slowing down we will begin cleaning up the place and should be good to go when weekend program begins. We are looking forward to a beautiful spring; all of you will need to brush up on your native plant flower names.
I’m off to National Camp School the second week of April. Colby and I will be going at the same time and will have making a lot of plans so if you have any let me know so we can include them. For example, did everyone know that the summer staff will we installing a fitness area, including volleyball, this year. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the photos.
Bill
