Happy Day in the Rain

Even though it was raining, I went to the site this afternoon to check on the crane.  It's huge, and it was slowly moving back and forth, although I couldn't see any people or purpose.

I'm not familiar with cranes, but I did observe that the circular internal parts of the tower are ladders.  I'm already impressed.

Via the construction cam, I watched men work all weekend with this orange drilling machine at the northeast corner of the tabernacle.  The weather was dry and clear, but the water was there anyway.  Obviously it's raining right now, but up is not the source of the wet.  

However, this afternoon the orange machine was not at the northwest corner.  It was at the south entrance to the basement.  At first I thought more drilling was going to happen.

Then I saw Mr. Track Hoe pull the machine up and out of the basement.  This was not a slow process.  In fact, things moved so fast that this was the only picture I was able to get.  It was at that moment that I realized the drilling in the northeast corner was finished.

I have no idea what they did, but here's what that northeast corner looks like now.

I'm guessing it was an important but difficult project, and I'll tell you why.  As these men loaded a generator into the front of Junior Front-end Loader, one of them did a happy dance.  They were clearly pleased.

And then Junior raced out of the basement as though he had stolen someone's lunch money.

After Mr. Track Hoe released the orange machine, he went back to digging.  His work today seems to be enlarging the hole in which the tabernacle sits.  You might be wondering about the pool on the left of this picture.  I am, too.

And he just kept digging; I hope he's being supervised.  But it did make it easier for me to see into the basement, and while not whining about the weather (we still need the moisture), it was a little challenging today, and the larger opening helped.

I could hear this hydraulic jack-hammer working away, but it took me awhile to get a picture of him.  Notice the sand, or maybe it's dirt, which has been moved onto the basement slab.  The jack-hammer appears to be working in places without the sand.

There are several piles of broken cement.  The one in the center is obvious.

This pile is on the west side.  The jack-hammer was noisily working away on the east side as I left.

Mysterious work is still ongoing in the upper north lot. 

I zoomed in to see if I could figure out what these holes are.  Seeing them better doesn't help.

These green lengths of tubing and metal were being assembled on the south lot.  I think they are part of the upper north lot work.  They show up earlier in the picture taken by the construction cam, but I don't think they are related to the work the orange machine was doing.

Also in the north lot is this red bridge, neatly place over a stream.  I have no explanation, especially since there's a perfectly good red ladder which could facilitate crossing that stream. 

Tandem trailers were everywhere at the site. 

I took this picture from the west side, near a very busy Post Office parking lot.  Daddy Track Hoe was busy the entire time I was there filling trailers with dirt from a new hole.

I took this picture of the west face with the crane above it.  I have to confess that I'm very excited about the next stage of work.

The west lot was a veritable parade of dump trucks which are diligently removing tons of dirt from the former site of the NuSkin parking garage.

Today the tandem trailers were color coordinated -- yellow on the west side, and white in the south lot.