Short and Sweet

We went up to camp this weekend and just spent the day. Our goal was to finish the deck which required buying an extremely heavy load of green-treated decking. Ray spent several hours at the lumberyard at home last weekend only to decide that it was too heavy a load to haul all the way to WI. We found a Menard's in nearby Rice Lake where we could get the supplies we needed. That way we only had to drive the 16' boards 14 miles rather than 90. We nailed the floor into place and then cut the edge to fit.


We celebrated our accomplishment with a burger and a beer at a local bar and then headed back to the city. Next time we go up we should have a cozy place to stay. The kids kept themselves busy by building "Hole City." They found a spot with some really sandy soil and were quickly able to dig hole as deep as they are! They found some camoflague netting left there by a hunter and used it to cover the top. I'm glad they have discovered the joy of digging a hole because as you can see from my last post, we still have an important hole to dig!
The other highlight of our trip was meeting our neighbor, Cy, who lives across the street. He has lived up there with his wife for 40 years and had all kinds of information for us about our land. Apparently our lake was built by beavers and didn't even exist as little as 10 years ago. One of the previous owners sold off all the oak trees when he was out of work which account for the many stumps that litter the property. Cy showed us a large grove of sugar maples at the top of our hill. A different previous owner tapped those trees and got 200 gallons of maple sap a day. Cy also taps maples on his property and treated us to some homemade maple syrup. At one time the land was used by a farmer to pasture his cows. Cy showed us an old road that the farmer had cut into the woods that was completely invisible to us until he pointed it out. That "road" just may solve our driveway issues. We are so grateful for both the fun facts and the practical advice he had to offer! In the city, our neighbors offer companionship and a helping hand whenever we need it. I'm sure we are going to come to rely on our new neighbors just as much at our home away from home.

Still No Outhouse. . .

Progress

Things are really starting to shape up at Camp Freedom after a very productive weekend. We managed to haul up the tent and the lumber for the frame. The trailer actually held together although we were too nervous to drive it into the site. We decided to move it "oxen-style" from the road to the building site to keep from destroying it on the last leg. Once we got all the building supplies to the site we had chosen for the tent, we had to clear all the brush and small trees. The construction of the floor frame went really well. Ray had built the whole thing at home and labeled the parts before disassembling it. Once we got there it was just a matter of laying it out and screwing it back together. I got a screwdriver for each member of the family and four sets of hands made short work of the assembly, even without electricity. The next time we go up, we will install the decking on top of the frame and then we can actually stand the tent up. Having the base camp ready and waiting for us will really cut down on the amount of time and energy it takes to stay there. Although we all worked really hard, we also found time for some fun. The boys are starting to learn how to entertain themselves out there in the woods. They are working on a really cool lean-to which I hope they continue to finish on subsequent visits. They already want to know how old they have to be to get their own chainsaws. I hope I don't come to regret this decision!

Measure Thrice, Cut Twice

What a busy week it's been! We had a great Labor Day BBQ in Fort Awesome and have spent this week getting ready to transport the tent up to Camp. The most crucial step was getting a trailer hitch installed on the van. We started calling around last week and U-Haul wanted to charge us $400 to install it. That was too much to pull around a free trailer. Fleet Farm sold us the hitch for just under $200 and Ray insisted he could install it himself. The instructions said the installation should take 45 minutes. Three hours and one borrowed sawzall later, it was on! We have the upright frame for the tent built as well as the floor frame. The floor looks pretty simple but it took Ray a while to get it just right. I believe the plan is to hang some joists in each small square and then install decking on top of that. When it's done it should be a very solid platform. Our goal for this weekend is just to get everything up there and re-assemble and level the floor frame. Everything is predrilled, but it will have to be put together by hand. We won't be able to actually put up the tent on the platform because we don't have the flooring yet. It was too big of a load to move the tent, the frame and the floor so we had to break it down into 2 trips. Hopefully, by the end of September, Fort Awesome will be erected in it's permanent home at Camp Freedom!

Happy Reading!

Ray was doing some research on driveway building and stumbled across this hilarious article. So far we have also found many of these things to be true. I especially liked the section on the importance of waving. It looks like a neat magazine, one we might subscribe to in the future. I can see a pretty basket next to the fireplace with a stack of magazines with articles on how to prepare for civil unrest. . .

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/crist96.html

A Note to my Readers

I was messing around with the settings on this blog and found that I have email updates sent to up to 10 readers anytime a new post was added. I put a few people on the list just to try out the feature. If you got the update and would prefer not to, let me know and I can take you off. If you would like to receive these updates and you're not on my list, let me know and I can put you on. Thanks for reading!

Planning

The kids got back to school this week and I spent some of my free time sketching out floor plans for the cabin. I am certainly not an architect so it will be a major miracle if these chicken scratches are somehow translated into a real building. I need to buy some graph paper and a big eraser and start refining these to scale. Finishing these plans is going to be a wonderful winter project. So far, though, I think I am headed in the right direction. There will be two small bedrooms and a loft that should accommodate at least 4 kids. The main floor is around 750 square feet and the cabin as a whole is just over 1000 square feet including the sleeping loft. It was tricky to get the wood stove centrally located so it would heat the whole building, but also in a place that would be outside of the main traffic flow. I also tried to locate the bedroom doors so as much heat as possible would blow in there. I assume we will need some kind of supplemental heat for those rooms, probably electric baseboard heaters, especially in the dead of winter. But we'd like the wood stove to do the bulk of the heating. I also situated the kitchen and the bathroom so the plumbing would all be in one wall. I am trying to plan this so the construction will be as simple and straightforward as possible. The footprint of the cabin when you include the wide front porch, is a 32 foot square. Ray was thrilled when he heard that. Apparently, squares make figuring out the angles much, much easier. Now we can take some stakes and rope up to the property and stake out a building site. It will be good to have some rough idea of where the building will be so we can property situate the well and the driveway. Progress continues on Fort Awesome and it should be ready for transport by next week. The whole family is looking forward to getting back up there. Most likely, we only have a few weeks left in the season, so we want to take full advantage of them.

Shelter, Part 2

Since coming home from our trip, Ray has been working on building the frame for the wall tent, which has been nicknamed Fort Awesome. It is coming along quite nicely. He is getting the upright structure in place and is then going to turn his attention to the floor. We can't get away over Labor Day, but our plan is to take it up the following weekend. Right now, we are prefabricating the pieces at home. Then we can take everything out to the site and assemble it there. There is no power at Camp right now, so any refinements will have to be done by hand. Eventually, we are looking into getting a generator to run the power tools for the "real" construction, but for now this seems like the easiest solution. This also allows Ray to putter on the frame during the evenings after work. Part of the intent of Camp Freedom was to give Ray a project to work on and he seems very happy out in his workshop. Now that the tent is standing up, it can be seen from over our fence. When people ask us what it is, we tell them it's our vacation home. Now all we need to do is get it in the right yard!

End of an Era

We just got back from a week of vacation at Little Boy Resort in Northern Minnesota. We have been vacationing there every summer for 7 years with our friends, the Schausts. Since we bought Camp Freedom, this will most likely be our last summer up there. Although we are excited about having friends up to our own place in the future, it was sad to say good bye to what has become such a special place for our two families. What made the trip especially sad was when Elena broke her ankle and had to leave early. The last view she saw of our beloved resort was from the back of an ambulance. What had been a lovely, bittersweet trip came to an abrupt and painful end. She had surgery and is now recovering at home. Here is a shot of Elena having fun pre-accident. Get well soon!