The Miller Project (.org) has moved hosts and I am updating everything in sight. Latest versions, new graphics, better functionality, all that jazz. Right now there are no pictures, but rest assured! They are on my computer and will return once the gallery is resurrected. Send feedback on the new theme, if you like.
Jake, Mark, Carter and I went out for the weekend to do some random stuff before it gets too cold. Jake and the others focused on clearing a path for an excavator to work on the drainage ditches some more and we talked dimensions and such, hoping to decide on something that will handle the spring melt.
I worked on the irrigation ditch and was able to clear some bottlenecks. Half of the thing is now flowing at full speed and not overflowing to the land around it. The middle portion of the ditch dropped, literally, 6 inches when I dug a new channel around a tree that was letting very little water through. It seems likely that we will dig a flood basin for the drainage ditch and the irrigation ditch to overflow into during the melt and during storms, otherwise we’ll just end up flooding the wrong places.
Jake has pictures, I unfortunately do not. So at some point, maybe.
We have one more trip planned but I’m not sure what we’re going to try and accomplish. Since the irrigation ditch is my pet project I’ll probably try to do that, but we got snow in the mountains yesterday and it may already be too late.
On Saturday February 8th Jonathan, Carter, Mark, and I went up to try and make it to the property and do some winter camping. We found that the final stretch of road leading to the property was not cleared of snow and had probably three to four feet of an icy snow mixture covering it.
By the time Mark and I made it up there Jonathan was already there and had parked a little ways up the road and hiked in to the camp site. Despite Jonathan’s warnings being yelled from out of sight, Mark tried to put his truck in four wheel drive low and plow through the snow blocking the road to the property. This was, in fact, a bad idea. While Mark stared at his stuck truck I began hiking some stuff over to the camp site and was able to walk on top of the snow without breaking through too often. When I did break through the snow it went up to my thighs.
Eventually Carter showed up and pulled Mark out of the snow with his truck and Mark promptly got his truck stuck again but much worse this time. So we left it for the night.
We were finally able to haul most of our gear in to the site and had a big fire going to try and stay warm since it was well below freezing. In the interest of not hauling in too much weight we left some things behind in the trucks that perhaps we should have brought along.
After huddling around the fire for many hours and eating some tasty pot roast that Carter brought and chips that Jonathan brought we decided to try and go to sleep around 1 am. This, however, did not work so well. Our tents were set up on top of about three feet of snow and without our sleeping pads that were resting comfortably back in the trucks, it was cold and uncomfortable. So after three hours of trying to sleep Carter and I got back up, built up the fire, and waited for the sun to rise.
The sun did of course eventually rise, as did Mark and Jonathan, then we made breakfast and then we had an exhausting time hauling our gear back out to the trucks and an hour and half of digging Mark’s truck out. But of course, fun was had by all and Jonathan and I are ready, willing, and excited to take more people back up to the Miller Ranch.
One last note. On the previous post, someone commented that they might be related to the Stewart’s and their comment was heartlessly deleted with all of the spam. If that person should happen to stumble back this way, please post another comment. Sorry.