More on spiders and a cafe discovery

We didn't get a lot of work done on the house this trip. I spent most of the time cleaning out the "casita," the travel trailer we had been using, which left Gerald on his own to put up some backer board in the guest bathroom shower so we could start tiling.

Meanwhile Bubba seemed to be feeling a little too at home at the land. On Thursday evening, he disappeared after his dinner and was gone for long enough to make us feel uncomfortable, especially given the recent mountain lion sightings in the area and the tracks I found not far from the house. We called and called and he finally came back, looking rather sheepishly like he'd had a fight with a mud puddle and the mud won.

Even the hose couldn't get him clean. The next night after he had his dinner, we erected barricades to keep him in the house or on the porch.

On Friday, Gerald met with a local guy who is liquidating an awesome inventory of reclaimed wood. Meanwhile I had an interview with folks from the Spider Pharm. We'd heard about the Spider Pharm from Siggy, the owner of Rumors restaurant, where we try to eat dinner at least once when we're at the land. A few months ago, Siggy told us Mike Rowe from the Discovery Channel show "Dirty Jobs" had been in to eat with his crew. Apparently, they had been filming a segment on the Spider Pharm, which was located in an unassuming pink house next door to the restaurant.

Turns out, this couple, Chuck and Anita Kristensen, collect and raise spiders and scorpions in this little unmarked house and milk them for their venom. They ship it all over the world for antivenom and medical research. The interview was fascinating. Chuck studied animal behavior, then got a degree in chemistry and put his education to work in this unusual way after he discovered that little was known about venoms because there was no supplier. Since then, research has found many therapeutic uses for substances found in the venoms, including treatments for stoke, diabetes and cardiac arrhythmias.

Anita was packaging up a shipment of scorpions when I got there, transferring them from mini habitats in containers of the type you might get at the deli full of potato salad and transferring them to Ziploc sandwich bags. She was funny. I asked her how she got into this business and she said, "I met my husband." She added drolly, "I had an idea that I wanted to work with animals."

Chuck and Anita recommended the Cafe behind the Kokopelli Antiques Store. Gerald had found it one day and we always wanted to try it, so after my interview we went. I couldn't believe it took us so long to try it. It was charming. I've included pictures here that, unfortunately, don't do the place justice.

The patio was sun dappled with sunflowers and vines everywhere. The tables were covered in oilcloth and shaded by umbrellas or canopies. Each came with a fly swatter, which we understood once our food arrived. An aviary housed finches and mourning doves. Chickens ran around loose. Two cute residences were at the back. It seemed they housed the owners of the antiques store and cafe respectively, and a hair salon.

The cafe has a walk-up counter where Gerald and I ordered a pressed paninni and a hamburger. Both were good. It's not a place to go if you're in a hurry. The food took a while. But it's a lovely place to sit with the paper and a cup of coffee.

Failed again

We arrived at the land full of optimism about passing the combo inspection. I had lost track of how many months it had been. When Paul Russell was out here working with the understanding that when he left we'd be ready, I took a picture of him working on the porch looking like he was freezing to death. Now, it was routinely over 90 degrees.

The day began well. We met with our neighbor, Kathleen, who is the property owners' association secretary and another property owner, Juan Garcia, about maintaining the roads. We had put out calls to a number of local contractors months ago, including Steve Hampton, whose company built the roads. But not one had submitted a bid, which was mystifying to us. But Juan was licensed and being a property owner we figured he'd be invested in doing it right. He agreed to the terms the Hamptons had done the work for last year.

Then Gerald and I got busy on the deck. The work was going well but by afternoon we were running out of boards. So we decided to try to use some of the more warped boards. We had had good luck drawing boards in using either a crowbar or, in some cases, a pipe clamp. Gerald was tightening the pipe clamp on a particularly warped board about the time Jeff, our inspector, pulled up. Instead of drawing in, the board split and Gerald was trying to pull it up as Jeff came up. It wasn't going well. Gerald talked with Jeff for a few minutes then went underneath the deck to try to work the board from the bottom. Eventually, he got the board out, but the ring-shank nails were another matter. The head from one came off the nail when he tried to pull it out, so he tried to beat it in with the palm nailer. Then the nail got stuck in the palm nailer.

In between all this, the inspector keep calling for Gerald. Why wasn't the flue installed in the fireplace upstairs? This is your third inspection, he scolded. "You never mentioned the upstairs fireplace," Gerald said, protesting that we didn't have the means to finish the upstairs at this point. The inspector said he wanted Gerald to read what was inside a box of fine print, saying he had been more than patient. The gist of the box was that he had the right to charge us for any more than two inspections. "The cost of the permit you bought includes two inspections," Jeff said. "I haven't charged you yet. I understand your an owner builder and I've tried to cut you some slack." But his tone was less understanding. He was sounding frustrated. So was Gerald. He was going by the last inspection report. There were three things on it, and he thought he had done those three things. We hadn't gone back to previous inspection reports to see if there were any outstanding issues there.

Gerald went back to trying to get the nail out of the palm nailer. I could hear him cursing at it, then the inspector would call him again and ask another question about something we had failed to do and Gerald would go back and curse at the palm nailer some more. There was a problem with the fix for the missing I-joist. The engineer had specified lag screws and we had used nails. Gerald said he had told him we were using nails and didn't understand why he put that and now he was in India for two weeks.

He was back at the palm nailer when the inspector called him again. He said we were going to need to get the manufacturers OK for drilling a glulam beam horizontally to accommodate the speaker wires. "Horizontally?" Gerald asked. He had thought it was only a problem if they were drilled vertically. "Horizontally, vertically, any which way," the inspector said. Gerald lost it. "I'm about ready to say I don't want any more inspections," he said. "I'm just going to build this house and live in this house." And then he went back to his palm nailer. The inspector made his report and left without saying a word to anyone.

We went back to working on the deck.
We didn't get much farther before running out of boards but at least we had turned the corner onto the one remaining side.

Here's how the south side looked. It's the longest side and where we spend most of our time. Now, we could get some porch furniture and not worry about stepping into a hole and falling through.

Gerald put it to good use.

After resting for a little while, he made a call to the inspector and left a message apologizing for behaving badly.

The next morning, we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at the Ranch House. We were glad we did because we found this sign saying they would be closing because one of the owners, Shelly, was having surgery.

We love the Ranch House. It's practically an institution in Yarnell. The food is good and abundant, and just the kind of place you imagine in a small town, with a colorful clientele, and cheerful, down to earth servers who remember everyone.

Shelly runs the kitchen with her husband Steve. Some time ago, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. For a while, we thought she had it beat, but it returned. She's been an inspiration to everyone who knows her, refusing to let it get her down. Our server told us they are closing the place for a week so Steve can take care of her after her surgery, then will probably open as they have found someone who can help Steve in the kitchen. Shelly came out to say hello and seemed in good spirits. She was laughing and telling jokes about her post-surgery morphine pump. Amazing.

spiders and snakes

On this trip, we had more animal encounters. We saw our first cow of the season standing at the stock pond when we drove up. It ambled away by the time I fumbled for my camera.

But we did get a photo of this snake. Gerald saw it first and called to me to come out and look at what he found. At first, we could only see the tail and thought it might be dead. As it turned out, it was only digesting dinner. When we checked for it later, it was gone.

Our phoebe fledglings were also flitting about. They seem to think they own the place. Of course, they were born on our porch rafters, so for all they know they do. One even flew into the house and landed on the refrigerator. Gerald told it to get out of the house. And it did!

We saw this tarantula on our way out. It wasn't moving much either, but it was alive.

Last weekend, we also saw a bobcat. It was bounding away as we were driving out of the Ruger Ranch entrance, looking like a giant house cat. That was the most exciting thing we'd seen since the foxes.

Getting ready for the inspection

We made a quick trip to the land this week to do the final corrections for our combo inspection.

Our framing crew had failed to install one I-joist, so we had to get a letter from a contractor indicating a fix. We did, and Gerald and J.C. installed some additional material to bridge the span.

I had to hold my breath. I think even J.C. was nervous on this tall ladder.

Afterward, J.C. installed steel shims between our support posts and deck.

While he was doing that, Gerald started to skin the bottom of the master bedroom. We had decided on wainscoting and drywall. The plywood is the height of the wainscot.

After lunch, Gerald and I did some deckwork. J.C. helped after he finished some last-minute electrical changes. By about 3 p.m., we had about two-thirds of the south side of the porch done.

Rain and more rain

When we next left Phoenix for the land, our car thermometer said 109. It was about 1 p.m. When we got to Yarnell, we had to call friends and gloat. The temperature was 70 degrees! It seemed we had missed the rain, but not by much. And it must have been a real gullywasher, as Gerald put it. The roads were all rutted and the washes were running. There was even quite a bit of water in the stock pond.





We were relaxing on the porch, enjoying our good fortune, when we heard a truck. Traffic noise is pretty unusual, so we looked to see what it was. I had to look twice. "It's a UPS truck!" I said. We cracked up. We were the proverbial "last house on the road." Our nearest neighbor was two miles in the other direction, so he wasn't going to make any deliveries the way he was going. There's no way out except back up the road, so I went down to the end of the driveway with my camera.

"I just had to take a picture of the UPS truck in the middle of nowhere," I said, and we both laughed. Turns out he was on his lunch hour. He had a delivery to make to Linda, at the first house near the ranch gate and wanted to see what was down the road. He wondered if it connected to Sorrells Ranch. 

"Nope," I said. "The only way out is the way you came." He apologized for disturbing us and asked what our address was. "I don't know," I told him. It never occurred to us that we could have anything delivered out here. But it was good to know UPS apparently went everywhere.

There were a couple of things we could do on this trip. Gerald was keen on tiling the shower, but we also had all that wood for the porch, so we ended up working on the porch. After what felt like a lot of work on Saturday, it still seemed like we had a long way to go.








Gerald was pretty red faced by the end of the day, as it got up to 103 right after lunch. We were grateful that we were able to work in the shade, and a nice breeze blew constantly.

We picked up Kathleen and Linda for dinner at Rumors. We had 6:30 reservations, and it was 8:30 by the time we left, but the second time the power went out, we took it as a sign.

It was raining and lightning as we headed back to the ranch. On the way home, our car registered 63 degrees! At 6:30, it had said 97. I was still wearing shorts because I couldn't stand the idea of putting on long pants. Now I wanted a blanket. We were excited by the prospect of listening to the rain fall on the tin roof, but we wanted to get home before it really got going.

But by the time we got back, the rain had passed. There was a good deal of new rain on the ground, so it must have rained pretty hard. We sat for a few minutes watching the lightning that raked the sky every few seconds, then gave in to our tired bodies and went to bed.

We worked on the porch again until lunch. We kept thinking it would get easier and faster, but there was always something. On the corner, we had to splice boards and so had to find ones that were the same width and thickness. Then we still had some of the wood from the Congress sawmill, much of which was bowed.

The wood from the Prescott saw mill was, indeed, better, but far from perfect. We still wrestled with warped boards and boards of different thicknesses that had to be shimmed and boards that didn't want to fit underneath the siding. We were both pretty tired by lunchtime, so we packed up and headed home. Here's how it looked at the end of the day.

Birds and lions... oh my!

Gerald's son, David, flew into town the following week. He's a musician and sound engineer, and Gerald asked him to come out and wire the place for sound. They got most of the work done in a day.

After the last inspection, we needed to visit the planning office in Prescott, the last time, our inspector promised. The meeting with the plan reviewer went very well. We added the woodstoves that weren't on our plans, and he reviewed some items that were of potential concern to the inspector. He didn't seem particularly concerned about them, but we would need to get a letter from concerning the safety of a missing I-joist the framers had not installed.

We found that the window from the master bedroom gave us a great view of our newest neighbors.

Through the window, I was also able to get a better picture of their mom.

The porch turns out to be a great place to watch birds. They get fairly close and don't seem too concerned that we're there. Here's a scrub jay that was making a fuss.

And one of several finches that were flitting around.

I took David on a couple of short hikes to show him some of my more interesting finds: the old car, which, after David did some sleuthing, declared as a Buick truck; the mica mine, the strange coffin-shaped holes in the ground of a neighboring parcel.

The area had gotten quite a rain storm earlier in the week, and there were tracks everywhere. We saw what  could only be a mountain lion track, as large as David's hand. 

On June 3, "The Yellow Sheet," which passes as a local paper of sorts, said the Arizona Game and Fish Department had received numerous sightings of mountain lions near Yarnell, one of which resulted in the demise of a pet. We had seen tracks before, but not for some time.

The tracks were in an area that was covered with tracks of all kinds. Along with the large mountain lion track, there seemed to be smaller cat tracks. We thought they might be bobcat, but after re-reading the Yellow Sheet, there was a separate article by a resident who had seen a mountain lion and her cub. So maybe we were visited by mother and child.

A bird in the... porch!

After our last attempt at a combo inspection, we had gotten the go-ahead to skin the interior walls, so Gerald worked on the west kitchen wall so that we could start working on wall coverings, cabinets, etc.

Meanwhile, J.C. came up on Friday and did some of the electrical work the inspector had noted.

Gerald's manager, Dave, came up on Saturday to help finish the siding. We had done everything except installing the bats on the south and west sides. Gerald and I thought, naively, that it would go quickly. But it took all day and wore us all out. Dave was a real trooper, serving as "ladder man," while Gerald and I took turns assisting. 

By the time we got to the west side, Dave began to muse whether the house was growing. We started running short on galvanized nails and it was a toss-up whether we would first run out of nails or steam. But we lasted until the nails were gone, frustratingly close to finishing, with just 13 bats left to install.

 
"Encounters with nature" was a recurring theme over the weekend. The first was unexpected and not entirely pleasant. When we arrived, I pulled out a T-shirt we had stored underneath the bed in the travel trailer. It was covered with little white specks. We shook out the T-shirt and other clothes and hoped the specks weren't something unpleasant, like insect eggs. I'm not sure if they were, but when I went to the trailer in the evening, the whole corner of the bed above where the T-shirt had been stored was swarming with ants.

Fortunately, we had stored some blankets in the house in plastic tubs and we also had a couple of cots we used to take afternoon naps on the porch. So we constructed rustic little beds and spent our first night in the house. The next morning, the ants were gone. Their absence was so astonishing that I had to check the wine to be sure I hadn't drunk more than I thought. Just to be sure, we went to town and picked up some ant killer.

Next, Bubba had an encounter with a bunny. We had seen cottontails in the meadow, but never near the house. This weekend, we saw two. Or maybe the same one twice. Anyway, it ran up to Bubba, which startled us all. But once Bubba got his composure, he chased it away.

Finally, we'd been noticing this bird that seemed to hover around the porch, particularly when we were around. From our bird book, we identified it as a Says Phoebe. I spent the whole weekend trying to photograph it, but it flew away every time I finally got the camera in focus. Finally I got him, or her as it turns out. Here she is.

We noticed she got more and more frantic the closer we got to the west side of the house. Gerald looked up and said, "Is that a nest?"

It was. Dave got this picture from the top of the ladder, capturing one little bird with his mouth open.