Saturday, November 19, 2005

Hwy 101 Road Trip



It was a 3 day weekend for us over the Veteran's Day holiday. We took the extra day to take a little trip down the 101 Highway and see what there was to see. We're glad we took the time to do it, as it was a very fun and relaxing weekend, even with all the driving. We stopped often along the way to see certain sights and to take a few quick hikes. We saw the North Head lighthouse at Fort Canby and the shipwreck and Fort Stevens. We had a short hike into Smuggler's Cove and saw some crazy surfers in the icy water and stopped by Haystack Rock for a walk along the beach. Of course, we couldn't pass up the Tillamook Creamery and we tested the squeaky cheese and had a fill of ice cream. Chowder at Mo's and then on home.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Lake Muirkirk


Well, a few weeks back it started raining and we noticed a puddle starting to form in our front lawn. It was where we had our driveway form a runoff so we didn't get water flooding our garage. The good news is, that runoff area works great, and no water in or in front of the garage. The bad news is, our lawn is having a hard time keeping up with all the rain. We drained the "puddle" with a bucket and that seemed to help. Even though it continued to rain, we didn't get water pooled back there...at least, for a while. Last week though we were having record rainfall, unkown to us. It's washington, it rains here, so we didn't really notice it was coming down extra heavy, extra long. Our "puddle" came back, and started to grow. It was dubbed "Lake Muirkirk". We decided something had to be done, so Ryan came up with an engineering scheme. First and formost, we had some gutters that were draining into splashblocks, or nothing at all. We have a gutter drain system built around the house, all the gutter water is supposed to be routed into these, but 3 of them didn't get hooked up. We figured we could wait till spring, or not have to worry about it...we were wrong. The front spouts were pretty easy. The back one took a little more thinking, but once we figured out what to do, it was pretty simple. Of course, that one will be temporary as it looks a little tacky. But it solved the puddle issue in the back, and now we can rest easy that water isn't seeping into our crawl space. Then was the issue of "Lake Muirkirk". This was a dreaded task as it meant tearing up the lawn a bit. We decided though to cut our grass into sod chunks in the path of where we would need to lay drainage pipe. This way we could just lay it back on top when we were finished. That part seemed to work out well (except for the extra 3 sod pieces that we had left over...not exactly sure how that worked out, but oh well) Ryan's use of a pickaxe made him into mud man. He was covered from head to foot. And after he got warm (even though it was raining) he took off his coat and sweatshirt, and I wouldnt let him spray mud on his white t-shirt, so that had to come off too) He wouldn't allow me to take any pictures of him, though he looked hilarous. All I got were the boots. We think the ditch worked. We layed corrigated pipe in the hole, filled her up, laid back the sod. But of course it hasn't rained since :)