Checking

 It rained hard Saturday night so I'm hiking over to Last Hurrah to see if there have been any issues created as a result of the rain.

When I first moved here I was reading a tracking book with a section on how to determine where deer and big horn were spending time. They would take their antlers and dig a slight depression. Going back and forth clearing out all the rocks. While out hiking one day with Kobae I came across this spot in the first video with signs of deer or big horn tracks and three slight depressions that had been cleared. The next day I hiked up into the rocks for a good vantage point to see my three deer.

Around noon one buck showed up and settled into the first depression sheltered by the shade of the trees. Not much later as the sun hit that position it moved over to the center depression and was again sheltered by the branches and leaves of the tree. Shortly after the sun reached that spot he moved to the third depression. Three deer weren't coming. Based on past experience one guy had figured it out.

Experience is a big deal. It looks like it's just me this year to run both places and deal with at least twice as many guests. I'll get a routine worked out but I can't have surprises. There won't be time. I'm trying to learn as much as I can now. Here's a spot where the rain is running down making gullies which will in time turn into mud slides so best to figure out how to prevent it now.

To some this might seem like a little thing but I remember when I was going around visiting 15 or so of our facilities on a regular basis, most of which had snack bars. Some facilities had rodent problems developing and some didn't. Talking to the managers they all claimed to clean their facilities good after the previous day's activities. There was one little difference that seemed insignificant at first but was the determining factor as to who had unwanted critters and who didn't. The managers who had their facilities cleaned right after the last game of the night was ended didn't have issues and the ones that came in early the next day to clean did. From the mouse's perspective the last game ended at midnight and it had free run of the place and all the spilled food until 3pm or so the next day (weekdays) where as managers who cleaned right after the last game ended and before going home left no reason for the mouse to hang around and no ill gotten gain if it did. Little thing. Big deal.

Walking over to the hogans I see the water is being funneled around the female hogan and washing out the dirt next to the hogan and underneath the deck area. That will be a little bit more complicated figuring out where to rout the water but while it's the same problem as on the hill in back of the lower house it'll probably be a different solution. When we built indoor soccer facilities in Houston and Shreveport they had to be able to withstand hurricanes. In Oklahoma and Kansas the local codes were designed to survive tornadoes. Colorado, Utah, and Idaho we had to make sure they could survive the snow loads on the roofs and you better not have your main building entrance facing the north side of the building on an east west building or when the snow melts off the roof it comes down and creates a huge solid snowdrift on the north side that never melts and is tough to move. In California and Arizona it was the environmentalists. I three times went under contract in Tucson and each time they found either Indian artifacts or bones.