Questions We're Asking Ourselves

Here are some questions that she and I have been asking ourselves, since we haven't really pushed the blog at this point:

How are we going to build our earth ship?
Right now, the consensus isn't a consensus at all.  We're oscillating between strawbale and rammed-earth tires.  It may be a combination of both, using tires for structure and heat-retention and strawbale for insulation and detailed work.  We're not also entirely dismissive of using adobe mud bricks either, and we're definitely planning on putting a yurt on top.

What's the timeline like?
We're finished with our current obligations at the end of April 2018.  Hopefully, before we get down there, we have invested time and money into having the BattleWagon ready to go, if nothing else, and then maybe even buying a camper or building out a cargo trailer.  (Still oscillating on that, too.)  This way we have something to stay in while we pursue larger housing.  Then we hope to acquire a more economical vehicle, a Battle Scout, and start building a mother-in-law cottage that we can move into as an intermediate step.  This should be about all we can accomplish in one summer, next summer, especially if we're climbing and road tripping throughout.

What are we going to do for money?
Mom will still be working four days a week at the high school here in Salida, while I'll be working on the homestead pretty much full time.  The Boy will probably be helping me lots with the building, while the Girl will still have school in Salida, possibly full days at that point, so productivity should be at a high.

What is the closest town?
In order of population and distance:
Moffat; 116, 10 miles
Saguache; 493, 10 miles
Salida; 5,236, 40 miles *Closest regional bus line
Trinidad; 8,771; 170 miles *Closest AmTrak connection
Alamosa; 8,780, 48 miles *Closest regional airport
Cañon City; 16,400, 98 miles
Pueblo, 106,595, 135 miles
Denver, 693,060, 239 miles *Closest International Airport

Is there anything there already?
There's nothing there.  It's a blank slate.  A few tumbleweeds, a couple of ant hills, and that's it.  No well, no electricity, no septic system.  Nothing.  Can't wait to build on it!  It's gonna be a blast!

Home, sweet home.

The BattleScout Search Continues...

One of the biggest challenges in establishing an EarthBase is finding the right vehicles to use for everything.  I say vehicles, because it's a lot more difficult to juggle a family in one single vehicle.  The BattleWagon continues to rock and roll, but eyes are peeled for a BattleScout, something small and economical, that will carry us all over the San Luis Valley for everything we need without breaking our bank.  The Valley is the size of the state of Connecticut.  Driving a 30-year-old van with a V8 around to get groceries in the next town could be a deal-breaker.  Plus, until we get established, the BattleWagon may double as a base camp.

The current best candidates are Toyotas.  Toyota makes rock solid cars and trucks.  My dad has a 1985 Tercel wagon, 4-wheel-drive with a granny gear, yet over 30 mpg on the highway AND a sunroof!  It has around 300,000 miles on it (second engine), and it runs and runs.  Recently, in fact, we had the good fortune, my dad and I, to drive this very car through the infamous stretch of US 285 known as "South Park" AS THEY CLOSED THE HIGHWAY, and, as I told him while I was driving, I didn't even realize it was that slippery.  Meanwhile, cars are upside down all over, semis are pulled over either chaining up or just waiting it out.  Slippery road, very high winds blowing previously fallen snow right across the road.  That car moved right along.  Blissful.

Also fitting the bill is one of Toyota's vans.  They are some of the only minivans available consistently with all-wheel-drive.  The older vans are especially noteworthy because the engine wasn't in front, it was underneath, so it looks and feels like you have a ton of room.  Plus they're a blast to drive.  The visibility is excellent, and the mileage is pretty darn good.  My brother recently came into a Previa for a case of beer, and all it needs is a transmission.  Van life trumps.

Beggars can't be choosers, and we'll be keeping our eyes open.  In the meantime, we're gonna take the best care we can of the Big Blue Van.

Grand Canyon

What can I possibly say about one of the most amazing places on the planet other than it was, well, one of the most amazing places on the planet I've ever seen.  I remember going there as a kid, and I remember looking off the rim into the great chasm beneath me and not being able to wrap my head around it.  As a grown up, not much has changed.  It's still bigger than my head has the capacity to rationalize.  Enjoy the slide show, as this blog is late.

The Earthship Idea

Lately, we've been getting really excited about the idea of an adobe earthship.  The terrain where the homestead sits makes it just about perfect to keep the place cool in the summers and warm in the winter.  We figure if we face the big windows toward the south, we'll be in great shape.  Plus it gives me a great opportunity to build a pseudo replica of Luke Skywalker's homestead from the original Star Wars movie...

After watching some videos online, I'm excited and discouraged to see that most of the labor is relatively EASY labor (i.e. not mentally impossible), yet it is LABOR.  Hours and hours of hammering dirt into tires is in our future.  Just hammering dirt.  Rammed earth tires for the walls, we'll mud over them, paint them, and bam, we're pooping in tall cotton.  The tires are great for walls.  They'll keep the heat inside when it's cold, and they'll keep it cool inside when it's hot in the summer.  We'll hopefully be able to reclaim and reuse a bunch of water, up to four uses, which will help a lot in a place that gets about 10 inches of rain every year.

The idea is simple, but I suck at explaining things and I'm lazy, so I attached a diagram and some examples.  More to come.

Base Camp

For the house design, we have decided to use adobe pretty exclusively.  A Yurt has been requested, and I'm pretty okay with that.  I'm also planning on building out storage containers for different "missions" and purposes, i.e. a medical module, a library module, a module for sleeping, etc.  I don't know exactly how it all will come together.  There's also talk of recreating Bent's Old Fort and building an adobe Holt (a term for the Roman Legion-Camp-shaped fortresses in the lands of Jim Butcher's brain).  Either way, our work is cut out for us, and there's lots of it to do.

The first phase will be to make sure we have adequate camping quarters.  Using what we have to establish what we'll have to build first, that seems to make the most sense.  Currently, we have a very large tent, a teardrop trailer, and, of course, the BW itself.  The camper can hold two and a small half, the tent, up to 8, and the van can sleep three or four comfortably before it becomes cramped.  The challenge now is to turn these independent parts into a system that we can use as a base camp for construction AND for expeditions into the more interesting parts of the world.

The (New) BattleWagon in the Flesh

The newest BattleWagon is the oldest BattleWagon.  She doesn't have a name.  My daughter calls her "The Big Blue Van" and my father simply calls her "Big Blue".  She's a workhorse, to be sure.  The nitty gritty of it is, she's a 1988 Chevy 1-ton van, Bonaventure model.  It's got a 350 cubic-inch V8, with throttle-body fuel injection, matched to a 3-speed automatic transmission.  I like to call her the Millennium Falcon, because, like her namesake, I feel like "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts".

This was the vehicle I learned to drive in, over a quarter century ago.  Since then, this van has traveled to Arizona numerous times, Washington state, Minnesota, and West Virginia.  She's shuttled soccer teams over high mountain passes, and families across stark deserts.  She's pulled trailers, other cars, and given the occasional ride to a stranger.  The heat always blows warm, and the old-school "smoking windows" up front keep it cool on the highway in the summer.  The 1-ton status gives it a little extra strength in its frame and a little extra height in its stance.

Built in Canada and sold to a church group near Pueblo, she wound up in my dad's hands after a trip to Phoenix in her predecessor, a slightly older Beauville van, turned out to be less-than-fun on account of not having rear air conditioning.  I don't know if that's the official story, but I like telling it that way.

Unfortunately, I have a ways to go to get this old van in the kind of shape we require.  The list, at this point, includes, but isn't limited to brakes, weatherstripping, gaskets, motor mounts, windshield washer motor, rear heat and AC, and tons of cosmetic touches inside and out.

Still as it is, it's really nice to have the ability to take 12 people somewhere (haven't done it yet, got up to 7 once), and to take all of the seats out and haul a cord of wood, 4x8 sheets of plywood, couches, or anything else I get called about.  That, and we've camped out in this van a few times as a family, and it's a great space for that.

The end goal, which may never be accomplished, is to turn this thing into a poor man's SportsMobile.  I don't know about throwing a pop top on there, but this van is the base camp for all of the expeditions.  Just need to get moving, and we are.  One mile at a time.

Bishop's Castle

This past summer, we took some time to go check out one of the craziest, most revered places in local lore, the castle hand built by Mr. Jim Bishop.  This guy is the real deal.  He has no teeth.  (Seriously, I saw him snacking on oysters out of a can with a toothpick (may not have been oysters), and I was overwhelmed with awe.

But I digress, he's spent the better part of his life collecting rocks out of the forest to build this amazing, wondrous castle.  We parked just off Co Hwy 165 and walked up to where all the other cars were parked.  The castle can't really be seen from miles off as one would expect, hidden in a pocket of foothills and pine trees.  However, when you get close, the highest point towers over the trees.

There's more to write, but we've had the fortune to go on more adventures lately, and it's been prohibitive of the time necessary to write.  Stay tuned!