Thank you to everyone so much!
Spike56: Very wise of you indeed. When I bought this house it had 4' of water in the basement for probably years. Rebuilt it all. There's a very wet mountain right behind the house. Leveled the area behind the house, dug a ditchswale to catch the mountain runoff and direct around and far from the house down to the road. Also made a 3.5' wide by 10' footer/french drain entirely around the perimeter of the house with drains on both sides of the house down to the road to catch the underground water. Haven't figured out what to do with the to-be-installed gutter water (roof water) but I think the french drain would be able to handle it well.
deezler: I wish I had those diagrams with the curvy lines that explain the elevations. Or even a current overhead pic. All I have is old googlemaps/apple-maps pics, and maybe a topo. I like a circular driveway also, as does the Boss, but the tradeoff of having the vehicles in front of the house and the wall/cliff/terracing and the view of the vehicles outweighs the benefits (for the Boss) of the driveway.
jaxs: Is it really ever too late to do double (or triple work)?
Midniteoyl: That explains a lot. I see this all the time and wonder why. I can't help but think that even with the excellent drivers, the rear cameras and whatever other safety equipment, it's more dangerous to be backing into driveways all day.
MoKelly: I'd gladly spend $150 for a pro to design this. It's just about impossible to find a pro around here.
Have Tractor Will Travel: That's exactly where we are going. I'm a little concerned about having a simple slope from the house to the road.
Move another couple hundred tons of dirt yesterday.
Here's what I've got now.
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