Well the problem was that our shore was eroding from behind the old wooden retaining wall and it was beginning to fall over. It was heavy lumber nailed to posts and sunk into concrete.
Here's a reminder of what it looked like, courtesy of a tug-of-war between Rocque and Haylee:
So to replace it, first Justin (aka Dittmar destruction) ripped out the old wooden retaining wall and piled it up. When we lit this sucker, we had a ragin' fire on Kyle's birthday. Well at least until Loveland's finest came and put it out... that's another story!
Then we put down a geotextile fabric (like a heavy-duty landscape fabric), then 1 1/2" rock base followed by 100 Tons of 6-18" river boulders (that's 3 side-load semi-trailers!!).
We didn't get any pictures of the early work, but Anne snapped a few pictures of Matt positioning the large boulders. (Matt says "running the Bobcat is cool! But I'll never be a pro like Justin!")
To place the bottom row of boulders, the largest ones were picked out and moved by the Bobcat and then set in place by hand. Then afterwards, Archie helped blade up more dirt to cover the bottom row.
The finished product, on a cold winter's day! Well, not quite finished, but the main wall is done, ready for more landscaping and finishing the boat ramp.
The first picture shows the two rock piles in front, for the smaller 1 1/2" rock and the larger 6-18" rock, and in the background is another small island of dirt that will be covered, then the boat ramp which will be concrete, then the main wall.
