'City Slicker' Driveway

Contrary to popular belief, Oregon does have seasons. They just aren't the regular seasons that you're used to elsewhere. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are four seasons - rainy season, cold rainy season, warmer rainy season, and construction season. You gotta make hay while the sun shines and you gotta get all that road work done before the rain inevitably returns. That was a random, rabbit-trailing sort of introduction for the point I'm making here - we don't have a gravel driveway anymore; it's chip-sealed. 

For twelve years, we've lived and survived with our dusty gravel road. You don't even bother with washing the car since it'll just get dirty again on your way home. By the end of summer, you could probably grow a garden on the bumper of your car, so much dirt had accumulated. It's pretty funny when you get the occasional summer rain shower turning all that dust into mud. You just clean the windows so you can at least see and go about your merry way (meanwhile looking like the country bumpkin that you are). When delivery trucks drive up, you see a huge cloud of dust from them flooring it up the road. For the most part, we were all tolerant of our driveway, but the conversation would come up every now and again about getting the road paved when we needed to order more gravel for the road. No one ever got around to doing anything about it. Until now. 

Yep, we've lost a signature part of living in the country - the gravel road. 

After all the 'chips' get ground in, it will look like a back county road, just without the stripes and reflector things in the middle of the road. Now we just need some 'Fresh Oil' and 'Loose Gravel' construction orange signs at the bottom of the road so people know to take it easy. No pealing out, no gunning it and making a dust cloud to annoy the neighbors, no turning the wheel while stationary, etc, etc, etc... Just takes all the fun out of having what little gravel is left. ;) 

The road guys came a day early, and they had equipment issues all week. (During the lulls of waiting for a rental piece to come, they took naps - yes, naps - in the shade. Can I get paid to sleep?) They've been working fast and furious all summer to keep up with all the jobs that they need to do. This was the only company that would do a private road; every one else was already booked with government jobs.

With all the banging and scraping going on, the toms would get all excited. They gobbled all day all week. I wonder if the construction dudes realized what they were doing to the big birds. 

The oil is 150 degrees when it's put down. 150!!! o_O 

Dusty, dusty, dusty.

Aw, it's a little roller. 

Eli wanted a closer look at them working. He loved having all the big boy toys coming and going all week.