Working on the Driveway... Take 4

Now this is getting ridiculous!  But I think we've finally got it.  Remember the big storm from a couple of months ago?  That  deluge gave us our first clue that the driveway still wasn't right. 

Our little community is called Prospect Canyon.  We have an association, but as associations go, ours is very informal.  Its purpose is to keep the roads.  To get to our property, you must leave the relative safety of the city streets and travel a mile or so up a county road.  From there, you move onto private roads for another 2 miles as you wind your way up the mountain.  Our little Ranch Owner's Association consists of maybe 20 property owners. 

Yearly, our friend Jim, the ROA President, calls a meeting to discuss the road, dues, etc.  We haven't had the pleasure of one of these meetings yet as we haven't been here at the time.  Next year, we will. 

Anyway, it is Jim's job to head-up the care and maintenance of our roads.  Back to the big storm....  When it rained so hard that day, the entire mountain had excellent drainage.  No-where did the water cross the Prospect Canyon roads except for one place.  You guessed it... our driveway.

Talk about an exhausting thing.  So let's review.  The first guy cut the road in entirely the wrong place.  It was too sharp of a turn and way too steep.

The second guy cut some of the steepness off of the entrance to the driveway and put in an extra 20' of culvert so that the turn wasn't quite so sharp.

The third guy smoothed out what the second guy did, cut drainage on part of our driveway, and then put down nearly 300 tons of the wrong gravel.  During his attempt to "smooth out" what the second guy did, he succeeded in removing all of the drainage on the hill entering our driveway.

The fourth guy came today, pointed out all of the many things the other guys did wrong, and then went about fixing it for a very fair price.  Of course, we'll probably have to buy another couple thousand dollars of gravel way too soon, but at least we won't have to watch all of our remaining gravel wash across the road and down into the canyon.

Some of these things, you just can't research enough.  Every time we hired someone, we thought they knew what they were talking about and we really liked them.  Until you live with their work, how would you know?  Try looking up "Building a gravel road," on the Internet.   Yeah, there are a few forums like http://www.tractorbynet.com/ or http://www.askthebuilder.com/ but finding the right person is really, really tough!

We're hoping that the 4th time will be the charm.  Especially since Leroy, our latest dirt guy, spent some extra time and carefully placed some really big boulders on the sides of our entrance.  Les and Leroy worked all morning today and Les took me up after his hard day's work to see my surprise. 

It felt like I was coming home.  I mean it.  Les, Schultz, Mindy and I spent about an hour just sitting in our chairs, appreciating our view, and talking.  What a wonderful end to a busy day.