School

Waiting for the bus on William's first day of kindergarten. Note the Timberwolf mascot T-shirt. He is displaying great school spirit already.

I have spoken to several people who camped or lived at the Stonehouse Park years ago as children and said they waited for the school bus at this same spot. They all said that our boys will never forget the experience, that it creates a vivid and lasting memory.

Boy's Point of View

Photography by William, age 5.

Odds & Ends

School started last Friday!

One of the most frustrating things about being here is that we are trying to balance maintaining an existing campground (albeit with minimal camping) along with running some pretty major construction and renovation projects. At some point the two will converge and we will hopefully find ourselves maintaining and hosting events in a beautiful new space, but in the meantime it remains a daily struggle.

Last weekend we had some wonderful volunteers come help us clean out an area by the bathhouse where we plan to put the first cabin.

We lost a tree in the storm and the guys took a couple hours to cut it up and haul it off.

The highway department arrived with MANY very large vehicles to replace the culvert at our new main entrance. They also did a lot of work out along the road to clean up the drainage ditch. It is starting to look good!

Biblical Rain

All of the many lawns at the park are mowed with great tenacity by our friend Bud. Bud loves to talk and tell stories but his favorite thing to do is prophesy Biblical Rain. On the prettiest day imaginable you can count on Bud to announce that floods are on the way. Bud went home for the weekend and just returned this afternoon. As soon as he arrived at the park the heavens opened and it started to rain. Biblically.

During the worst of the storm we were holed up in the store and I didn't have my camera to get pictures of the wind making waves in the pond or the trees blowing like crazy or the 3 inches of water cascading over the picnic pavilion floor. These pictures were taken shortly after the storm blew over after about 20 minutes of heavy rain.

In order, here are Lake Fighting Field, Lake Pond, Lake Corn Crib, Lake Three Bay, and finally, one area that actually benefited from the downpour - our newly laid sod.

Progress

Progress... In the last few weeks that is what has been done.. Progress..

First the pavilion roof. The roofing crew finished the roof of the pavilion... and boy does it look good.

The cedar shake takes a bit longer than normal roofing but, its look makes up for it. Now that the pavilion roof is done we have moved onto the corn crib. The corn cribs roof needed its rafters and baseboards that the cedar shake goes on replaced.


Now we do not have everyone working on the roof. There is another crew finishing up the parking lot and working on paving stones. As you can see we have started the base for paving stone for the patio behind the three bay barn. Our next step will be to put sand on top of the gravel and smooth out the surface of the sand to lay paving stones.

The parking lot has made a lot of progress. We have completed the retaining wall on the islands in the parking lot.



We have started the planting of the plants as well. We have planted four 12 foot tall lindens. The progress of the park is going really well and we hope the progress will increase every week as well.