On the road again...more lumber!

We made another trip to Colorado to pick up finished lumber and move logs to a new miller out there. We left Thursday and came back on Sunday and what happened in between was not at all what we expected.

First, the new miller, Joel, is amish and a truly wonderful person.  He also help break many of our stereotypes of how the amish live (in a good way).  While his family doesn't use electricity like a modern family, they do have 3 solar panels set up so that they can run an electric well pump, a refrigerator and some lights in the barn.  He uses a diesel sawmill (all hydraulic - its a really nice mill) and has a diesel skid steer to move logs and lumber around.  He carries a cell phone and seems thoroughly versed in all things modern life.  In the end, we felt like we'd found a kindred spirit after visiting with him.  His family of 4 is living in a cabin about the size of the one we're building.  They have chickens and can produce from their garden.  His primary goal is to stay on the farm with his family and we can certainly relate to that.  We look forward to getting to know him better.

Jeremy with one of the 8 loads of logs we hauled.

Jeremy, Joel and Caleb (the little one) in front of the logs we moved Friday

This was physically the easiest trip we've made so far because there was a skid steer with forks at both ends of the trip and Joel is only about 10 miles from Jeremy's grandparents.  We were able to make 7 trips on Friday and 1 on Saturday (Joel wasn't available for most of the day) for a total of about 60 logs moved this trip.  I have to say, Joel clearly has some time in on that skid steer!  He picked logs off the trailer like a pro.  After he was done unloading the last load, he loaded the finished lumber for us.  He had it banded and blocked such that he could pick it up in 2 bundles and place it in the bed of the trailer.  That was WAY easier than loading it by hand like we had been at the other miller. 

Joel unloading the trailer like a pro.

We took the finished wood up to Jeremy's grandparents and his grandpa loaded the two 25 foot long 7x10's that will form the continuous top plates for the cabin.  The finished load looked something like this:

Kids, wood and mountains as we set out for home.

On Saturday, since we weren't moving logs we took the kids around in downtown Westcliff.  It was a pleasant walk around and there are several interesting things to see in the little town.  The day was beautiful and we greatly appreciated the day of almost vacation.  We also got to visit with old friends who were there for the summer.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery can't be beat!

We also got to celebrate Jeremy's grandfather Ott's 86th birthday with him while we were there.  You'd never know the man was 86 by how he gets around!  I took some video of him loading the trailer (it took about 6 minutes for him to load it each time) but it's too large to upload on the blog.  Just know that he's an amazing person (both of Jeremy's grandparents are) and we couldn't have done any of this without him.

The trip back was uneventful until we got to Chapman, KS.  Somewhere around there our passenger rear tire on the trailer blew out.  We discovered that the fender on that side had gotten bent forward somehow and had rubbed the tire away.  We limped to Junction City in hopes of finding someplace open at 6:00 on Sunday to fix it but had no luck.

Very dead wheel...

A couple of very nice people at the Walmart tire center let us park it right under their security cameras as they were closing up.  We then came home, unpacked and went to bed.  Jeremy and the kids will be buying a new tire and rim and making the return trip to Junction City this morning.  Hopefully, all the wood is still on the trailer when they get there and no new craziness will happen.