The heat has brought out the blackflies, and long-sleeved shirts, pants, and headnets are in order, especially on the yurt site, which is sheltered from the wind.  The yurt site is baking hot!  My neighbour has a mill and he could make rough-cut 2 x 6s.  Our task was to make a level platform on top of the log foundations.

Some final notching

Et voila!  From the left- Lasse from Denmark (he stayed on for a while after his contemporaries left), Fred from England, Ben from England about to decapitate him, and Jean from France.

Now we just need the decking – but I have yet to figure out how to get that as there is no planed lumber to be had closer than Williams Lake, and  I don’t have a trailer.

I have often taken pictures of Perkins Peak.

There is a mine near the top and you can drive way above the treeline when the road is dry enough.  I had never had the opportunity to go.  I had heard there was a lot of logging, and that the logging roads confused the way.  Anyway, we went in search of it and climbed high up into the cutblocks.

After a lot of backtracking and messing about, I decided that was as high as I was going to be able to take a vehicle, and left the boys to continue on foot.

None of them were all that experienced, but they found their way to the peak and camped by a lake just below it.  They even found their way down again!

Back at home, we started the outhouse.

Lasse left after a few days, and this was as far as we got on Jean’s last day.  I will have to buy some plywood to make the seat.

I will be going into Williams Lake tomorrow: today we put the metal on the roof.

The volunteers have not been my only visitors, however.  A lady wrote and said she had met me years ago when I gave a slide show in Edmonton.  She and her husband were visiting Bella Coola for the first time – could they drop by?  They were self-contained in a camper.  A couple of days before they left home, I read their emails properly – and found that her husband was a construction worker and plumber.  Wow!  Almost impossible to get a plumber here.  Could he move the reverse osmosis filter from under the sink to the basement?  It gurgles when it processes water, annoying me at night, and also I worry about it freezing when I go away, as it is very difficult to drain it.  The filters needed changing, too.  That job was a year overdue, and suddenly we were very short of filtered water.  The untreated well water is safe – just tastes horrible.  So we had to make a run to the river (which has dropped and cleared a little since the spring flood) to get drinking water (which had to be boiled.)

Of course, my 2-year-old filter system was out of date and it was hard to find the right filters.  But Brian managed it just in time.  Here he is dismantling the filter.

And here it is installed in the basement.

What great luck they wanted to come at just this time.  Next year I want a bathroom installed…..

Other friends had talked about coming through as well – and they all came at the same time.  There were 9 people for dinner that night.  My yard looked like a camp ground.

A while ago, I had found some kitchen cabinet doors at the share shed at the dump in Williams Lake.  While the boys were hiking at Perkins Peak,  I struggled to install the first two.  It took most of 2 days!  Brian wanted something to do for his second day here, so he finished off the rest in no time – and made all sorts of nice finishing touches I would never have bothered with!

I’ll have to keep my eyes open for more matching doors!  (And invite Brian and Gladys to visit again!)