It's day 3 and I'm finally spending the night in a tent. The car was fine the first night but the last 2 were pretty uncomfortable. I wanted to wait until I had a tent platform built, which I had done by yesterday evening but then got caught up video chatting with Liz until it was dark and then I didn't feel like setting it up with a headlamp.
I've already started to fall into a groove. I go to sleep early, like around 10 and get up with the sun around 6-6:30. Nothing is open so I can't make calls or go get supplies, and I don't want to break the still of the early morning with a generator or chainsaw so I've been clearing brush in a few spots I'd like to have people camp. It's probably the only time I've ever felt like George Bush.
Then I've been running around like crazy getting things from the storage unit, the hardware store, and picking up free pallets, and billboard vinyl wraps, and sawdust. I'd read and heard that these things were easy to get but hadn't really thought they would be. I called a custom cabinet place nearby and they had bags and bags of sawdust, so I went over and grabbed 2 40lb bags for the composting toilet.
The pallets are everywhere once you start looking. They're hiding out behind lumber yards by the hundreds. I bought a couple pieces of plywood and screwed them down to some pallets, and poof, a tent platform. I also put a water sealant on it so it'll hopefully last longer and didn't nail the pieces together so each piece of plywood is on top of 2 pallets and can be easily dragged individually by one person if they need to be moved to a different camping spot. And, I screwed the plywood on so I could easily take the plywood off and use it for something else if I needed to.
It's really nice inside the tent. I don't have to worry about things falling over. I feel dry and warm, and the floor is nice and smooth, no twigs or roots poking me in the back. I'm looking around on craigslist for all kinds of things, but one of them is a twin and queen mattress. I'll put the queen in Liz and I's tent and when she gets here, and just get the twin in the small guess tent for whoever. Now that's camping in style.
I also drove down toward the Lake of the Ozarks today to pick up some old vinyl billboard wraps. It was a little farther than I expected, but I at least got to see some of Jefferson City and the touristy Osage Beach area. I haven't even looked at what all the vinyl wraps say yet. They're pretty massive and the bigger ones are hard to lift. The one I did open had SUVs on it. Who knew they were good for something?
I'm planning on putting them up over the tent platforms so everything stays nice and dry. I'll probably have to cut the bigger ones. They're like 16'x40' and super thick. It's funny you can even see the photoshop .psd filename on the outer edges that are normally hidden from when they printed it on some kind of massive billboard printer. I'm going to try to find somewhere closer that I can get them from, and also I'd like to see if they have any of the plywood panels from the older type billboards. The place I went to today had some I saw over in a pile but they looked like they were in pretty rough shape having been left outside uncovered.
I got stuck in the mud a couple days ago, but managed to rock myself out. I called the gravel people to come out and they said I needed to clear out the driveway so that their was 12' of clearance both horizontally and vertically for the dump truck to dump the gravel. So that'll be another half day or so of brush clearing. It'll be nice not driving through all the mud and ruts when it's done though.
Tomorrow I'm going in to Columbia to see about this 8 hp wood chipper I found on craigslist. If it goes well I'll be able to mulch that brush and use it for the garden and the paths around the campground. If there's room I'll probably pick up another 55 gallon drum or two while I'm in Columbia. There's a recycling place there that sells them for $6.
My other big project is getting the composting toilet built. I've already sunk one of the 4 cedar posts that'll hold it up off the ground and form the frame for the walls. It's quite a task, but enjoyable work. I find building stuff in general, especially something as environmentally friendly as a nice composting toilet out of recycled materials very rewarding.
The journalism students came out on my first day and interviewed me and I gave them a tour of the property. They were here for hours and they even came back to re-shoot some stuff the next day. It went well and the story is supposed to run in the Missourian some time next week. I'll post a link to it when it comes out.
Showing them around made the need to clear up the tour route very obvious. I'll try to get to that somewhere between getting the garden going and starting on the straw bale place. I've pretty much decided to give one tour a week on Saturdays at 2pm. It's quite a walk and takes awhile so I don't want to be doing it all the time.
The creek was higher than I'd ever seen it when we went walking around and it was beautiful. I don't think I've ever been out here during Spring as an adult. I've always come during the heart of summer, but there are quite a few flowers, both on the ground and on the trees. You can also see a long way off without all the leaves on the trees.
