The Morphagus
Chapter 14
By Cathy-Ann
This all takes time, about 6 weeks to be exact. He also builds a road that connects with highway 395 near the Convict Lake exit. His road has a huge sign on it, 'Sierra Mining Water Treatment Plant'. The road is a dirt road. 100 feet down the road there is another sign. PRIVATE PROPERTY, TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED.
So the third week of August the kid is heading towards the Hat Creek Fishery off highway 395, near the Mammoth Lakes area. He has made an appointment to be there. He has offered to buy up all the extra fish that they went over on breeding. Usually they breed a certain number of fish to restock the creeks with. Sometimes they end up with extra fish that if planted in the creeks and rivers would jeopardize the fish habitat.
The kid shows him a rough map of the road to the water treatment plant and a road that goes down to a fish breeding pool that dumps the water into several creeks that exit the treatment plant. He shows them a map of the creeks and ponds of an area that is over 50 miles wide and 70 miles long, filled with tree's, meadows, rivers, creeks, ponds and even a few small lakes.
The Hat Creek Manager said he thought that area was a desert. The kid responded, so was Los Angeles before water was added to it. He had several thousand tree's imported and planted along with berry bushes to provide feed for deer and other plant eating animals.
He has to get state approval to widen highway 120. They will not approve. So he has a turnoff from highway 120 from one of the original paved roads of a driveway, He then builds a 4 lane highway with center divider that is over 40 miles long, east to west, the width of the land plot. There are entrances to the highway on both ends, just within the property line. The highway bordered the state road, except where it would be shorter to go in a straight line.
He goes into Bishop and files mining claims on his land and lands east of his property. As for mining he finds a silver mine which is 80 miles long and 20 miles wide down to a depth of two miles. It is bigger than the 'Comstock' of Virginia City, Nevada. Half of it is on his land and the other half on state land, land which he has filed a mining claim on..
The open pit method will be the easiest way to mine it. While back in town, he forms the mining company. He buys the supplies, tools and has the biggest tools shipped by rail line from Las Vegas. Though he has to build a rail line from Las Vegas to his location.
His new mine now is a silver mine.
He takes several bids for the rail line. He hires a construction company that build freeways. He has them survey and construct the road bed in preparation for the other company that was laying track.
The road bed was elevated the entire distance from Las Vegas to the Mine. It was about 70 feet wide and elevated 30 feet high with concrete and a rebar reinforced roadbed. Their were three tracks, the outer one for hauling loaded or unloaded mine cars, the inner one for inspections. Where the were low sloping hills and no roads, then was closer to the ground.
Before the railroad entered the mine area, it took a 5 mile loop to turn around and come to the returning line to Las Vegas. In Las Vegas it also looped as well several miles outside of the town where the smelter was located.
He spent slightly over 100 million for all these improvements for the land he had purchased, for the silver mine, for the railroad and for the smelter outside of Las Vegas.
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YEAR 5 - 1964
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Back at the mine. The mining company has barely scratched the surface as the open pit mine slowly is spread out search for the silver. The raw material is now cleaned and washed and separated. He only wants ore in the ore cars going to the smelter.
The waste rock is sent to the cement plant.
The ore cars take the railroad to the smelting plant in North Las Vegas.
Jamie is in Las Vegas looking at the new motor homes at the Las Vegas Camping Show, held in the convention center. He see's a motor home and what it offers. He buys it. He uses it for an office when he goes over to the mine.
He also likes it because he can entertain friends from town in it. Sometimes he drives it over to the Convict Lake Cabin and parks it in his private parking lot. Howie comes over to visit him and look over what the muggle have invented. A house on wheels.
Howie says that his cousin, Rubeus Hagrid would like something like this but the motor home would have to be bigger. Although he has heard that there are wizards who do live in the muggle world. Something like this might be nice to go on a vacation.
Aberforth drops by to visit and he really likes the motor home. He asks what it costs. At a mere $50,000 or 6,000 galleons it is still a bit much.
He looks around and no one is looking so he teleports to Valerie's. Together they teleport to Sierra Alley. He morphs into she, clothing and all and then floo to the Leakey Cauldron. She looks for a solicitor to buy some property in the UK, near London. She wants to build a house, a tree house in fact.
They find some land near Ottery St. Catchpool next door to 'The Burrow' with the Lovegood residence on the other side. Notice me not charms are placed on the property. Then the glade is copied and then pasted to this location. She doubles the amount of tree's though along the perimeter.
Within the new glade she builds a new patio and BBQ area and has a roof suspended over it to keep any rain that might get to the glade floor, to keep the patio dry. She builds a tree house about 100 feet up and another at 150 up the side of the Sequoia Giant tree.
She has a comfy couch on a roofed over platform suspended a mere 70 feet up. It has railing around it with an attached bathroom. There is a HDTV with DVD player, stereo surround sound and a CD Player for music. The total wattage that can be output exceeds 300 watts. There are also muggle appliances as the generator is over 250 feet up a 400 foot tall tree. Several of the tops of the tree's have solar panels on them to generate electricity.
There is a wooden fence along side the property line at ground level, 100 feet up, 200 feet up and 300 feet up that states that trespassers are not welcome and will be dealt with most harshly, depending on the level of intrusion.
The tree house winds around the tree with stairs as it rises high and higher up the tree wrapping around the tree like a climbing vine..
Once in a while she can hear voices, but they are moving quickly and they are high up. She investigates by walking on the walkway which moves in front of her and grows along the sides of the tree's.
Peering out thru the tree's she can see several wizards on brooms. They are playing a short game of quidditch in the area between her property and the burrow, where the Weasley family lives.