What a mess! This slideshow will show just exactly what we walked in on. (slideshow)

One of our friends thought that Wes's toy box was a great place to raise children!(slideshow)

We have no idea what these are, but they have sprouted up all over, even though it's been a long time since it rained, and it's been well over 100 ° for two weeks now. (slideshow)

Rob found these berries in the ravine. Of course, he was sure they were edible, and ate some just to prove it. Loretta wasn't so sure. But they sure are pretty!

We've never seen milkweed plants with the fruit on it before! Milkweed plants are the only thing that monarch butterflies will eat, so maybe we'll have some monarch butterflies later on. (slideshow)

Rob found this snake print on the road going across the ravine. It's about 2 inches wide, so it must be a huge rattlesnake! We sure would like to find him before he finds one of us. Coco will be going for her rattlesnake training in a couple of weeks, so maybe she'll find it for us.

In this hot sun, Rob decided to build an awning. But we had no more hooks. He had salvaged a piece of wire from the barb wire fence, and fashioned it into just the right sized hooks, and was able to assemble a great awning. (slideshow)

OK - so here's the well rig. It's mounted on an International truck. As you can see, all four wheels are completely off the ground. It's held up by 4 huge hydraulic jacks, and it's so stable that even when the rig is drilling through solid granite, the rig stays completely still.

The tubes you see in the trailer in the foreground are the casings. The long rusty things sticking out the back of the truck, horizontally, are the extra rods, and rods that you see vertical at the end of the truck, are loaded into a device that swings around to put them in place to add another extension.

The end of the truck holds the drilling part. It's about 40 feet tall, and holds 6 extra 'rods' (which are the drilling extensions).

Here's where the drilling will happen. Looks pretty calm right now.

Looking up 40 feet to the top of the well rig

Another picture of the top of the well rig.

We can certainly understand why they wanted us to clear such a large area!

Here are some of the drilling bits. These are hammer drill bits. You can see the bumps on the bottom and drill flutes on the side, so the rock gets hammered and drilled at the same time.

The big bucket holds about 200 gallons of water. Since they are drilling through granite, they feed water into the process to keep down the dust and cool off the drill bits. At the beginning, they fed about 5 gallons per minute. Near the end, it was nothing.

In the center of this picture is the drill bit they used to get through the dirt.

Putting the first drill bit on.

Ready to rock and roll

Pulling the drill bit up a little so they can double-check the alignment.

The first dirt is being drilled out. Now you can see why they might need some water to get rid of the dust.

Once they get a pilot hole drilled, they increase the size of the hole a little, and then put this 12-inch casing down. Another (smaller) casing will later go inside this one, and cement will finally be poured between the two casings.

Notice that the color of the debris has changed. We are now through the dirt, and into the granite. In this picture, it's decomposed granite. Later we started drilling into solid blue granite, and finally into quartz, where the water is.

Now that we're into solid rock, they have to change the drill bit (again). This is one of the hammer drill bits from the previous photo. As you can see, they load these with a huge hook on a cable.

Attaching the next extension. As you can see, each rod as a male thread that screws into the corresponding female end of the next rod. They were very conscientious about making sure they put grease on both sides every single time they attached a new rod.

You can see the water beginning to come out now. This isn't our water yet. This is just the water they use to cool things off and keep the dust down. They force air into the hole, to force the debris and water out.

The slurry is starting to spread. Hmmmm... so where is this all going to go?

It has now created a very large pool of gunk.

So Rob starts digging a trench for the water and granite to have a place to go. (Doesn't he have a nice butt?)

hmmm.. now just exactly what angle will be the best for it to meet up with the existing flow?

This isn't as easy as it looks! Rob ran into rocks and even tree roots.

Here comes the gunk, finding it's way to the trench

Loading another drill bit

Rob encourages the gunk to follow the trench, instead of just meandering where it will.

Loading the 8-inch casing. They had a short piece that they installed, then a longer piece, and the two were welded together.

Guiding it up to the loader.

Check out the old tin cups they use for drinking.

It's now time for the inner (8-inch) casing. Here, Wally is welding two pieces together, so it will be long enough.

It's been several hours, so Rob and Wes find shady places to watch the progress.

Once the casing (about 30 feet) is pounded into the hole, Leroy cuts off the excess about 2 feet tall.

The hole is sealed off to prevent debris from falling in.

It's been a long hot day, and Wes just nods off, despite the incredibly loud noise coming from the drill.

Our first water! (want a drink?)

Our water flows down the trench (along with all the granite debris). The water is actually contained in cracks in the granite. When the drill hits a crack, it spins erratically. Another sign that water is coming is that the debris coming out changes. In this case, there was a lot of quartz coming out.

Leroy sets up a PVC pipe to measure the output. He dams it up, so the water has to flow through the pipe. Then he uses a one gallon can and a stopwatch to time how long it takes to fill the can. At this point, it took 2.8 seconds (about 20 gallons/minute)

I know it doesn't look like much, but it was very exciting. Here you can see the gallon can he used to measure it. And the water looks almost like cement, there's so much gunk in it. But that's just the powdered, pulverized granite. When it settles, it will be fine.

This is early the next morning, before drilling started. You can see it looks almost like fine gravel built up around the opening.

Now that water is flowing, Wes is having a ball. He made ships and boats, piers and docks.

Believe it or not, Rob had totally shovelled this clean the night before. Now, it's almost full again.

Measuring the water flow

Wally keeps an eye on the equipment

Wow! We hit water! Look at the amount of water that Wes has to play in now!

The pipe is so full, it almost overflows the dam.

And it's an actual 'river'

This is what it looks like coming out of the well.

Here it is coming out of the pipe (slideshow)

Wally and Rob, satisfied with a job well done.

Leroy finally stands still long enough that I can get a picture of him.