Normally by this time of year, we would have done at least one or two backpacking trips into the Sierra. And this year, with the lower snow levels, we had plans to really hit the mountains early and often.

But those plans have been put on hold.About two months ago we were idly scanning the real estate ads for Tuolumne County...and the next thing you know, we found ourselves buying a cabin up by Twain Harte. It's a nice location, with easy access to both Yosemite some of our favorite wilderness areas, like Emigrant, Hoover, and Carson-Iceberg. The price was right, even if the cabin needed a lot of work.

And what the heck, it was just a cabin, so how complicated could it be, right?

Well, it was a lot more complicated than we would have guesses. And after working through some ridiculous details with the fine public servants at Freddie Mac, we finally closed escrow about a week ago.

Of course, that meant that we couldn't leave town until we closed escrow, which was supposed to happen "any day" for over two weeks. And now there are a million things that we want to do up there...and so our last two weekends have been spent tearing off old plywood, ripping out old carpet, cleaning, connecting the water, electricity, septic and gas, and refinishing the woodwork.