Prep for winter

Now that we have a building erected to aid us in developing the property, we needed to be able to get "stuff" physically into the building. This meant I needed some rock brought in to raise the ground to be level with the building's floor. I was able to connect with Remi, who did the excavation work to prep for the building going up, and he agreed to get some rock brought in and leveled out. When he was finished, I asked our neighbor, Nick, to shoot some pictures before I paid the bill. I always prefer to look at a finished project before I start dishing out our money. Well, it appeared that Remi did a fantastic job, which would now allow us to put the Bravo trailer inside, and leave our camper in the building also to avoid having to pull it up and back every time we go to the property.

Lorraine and I were going up, and then Bryan and Amy were coming up later to be able to store their pop-up camper during the winter. Bryan has helped us out so much that it is easy to say "hey, as long as I have some room, you can store your camper in our building".

The trip was non-eventful, but WOW on the fall colors; it was absolutely breath-taking. We did stop by Ski-Hi to pick up apples and donuts, a normal thing to do in the fall. We arrived at the property around noon, and dropped the camper off in the fire lane. We needed the Bravo trailer to go in first, as it was going to be positioned in the southeast corner of the building which is as far from the garage door as it could be.

So, I moved the Bravo up to the building, and then I had to get to washing it. It has set outside, in the weather, for five years. I looked back and found that October of 2018 was when we started leaving it up there after hauling it back and forth a few times. When things sit outside, algae growth is the major challenge, and this was the case with the Bravo.

To speak to the Bravo and our evolution...... We started out storing things in metal garbage cans to avoid hauling everything up and back every time we made a trip. So, things like paper plates, cooking utensils, etc. is what we stored in them. But we needed more stuff up there, and with kayaking being a part of the overall business plan meant we needed a better place to store all of those things associated with paddling. The Bravo came in to be our "moveable shed", storing much more than was practical than the only storage we had, that being the garbage cans.

So yeah, I needed to get it washed down somehow before putting a dirty algae-covered trailer inside of our nice clean building. I took up three gallon jugs of water, and I was going have to be creative to get the job done while conserving the little water that we did have. So using a garden sprayer to pre-wet and post-rinse would do the job. So, I won't bore you with the details, but I did a decent job of getting it clean enough to deserve a resting place inside of the building.

Right now, it is a difficult backup of trailers into the larger 10x10 garage door due to the land still in some state of disarray from the building construction excavating efforts. But the Bravo went in with no real issues, and we were able to navigate inside the building in a manner that placed the Bravo right where I wanted it to be with decent clearances along the wall and at the back doors.

The next step was going to be to get the camper inside. So it was up to the fire lane to hook it to the truck again and bring it back. Fortunately, with the clearing we needed for the building, it is quite easy to head east towards CR-E and turn towards the building to stage for backing into the building. And that is what I did, until I heard Lorraine yelling at me to stop.

Well, I was too close to the building porch roof corner, and the venting unit on top of the camper scraped against the flashing trim for the porch roof. It only scraped the camper unit, so that was no big deal. But now we were stuck with about a 10"x10" corner of the trailer precariously sitting just below the corner of that porch roof with about 1/2" below it. I couldn't move forward or I would rip off that corner of the camper and that corner of the porch roof. I couldn't go in reverse as I was just going to rip it along the camper unit again and do even more damage. Wow.

I could see that one reason this occurred, if you ignore my dumb move, was because there was a drop into a slight hole in the land all related to the excavating. When the back tire of my truck went down into that hole, it raised the back corner of the camper. So what is the natural thing to do? Well, if I drive the back wheel of the truck up on some boards, then it should lower the corner of the camper so I could pull it forward and get out of this predicament. So that is what I did..... I had some smaller lumber scraps in the building and built these up in front of the back tires, intending to drive up on them. The plan would have worked, but the boards collapsed sideways and this, now, had the camper corner stuck on the roof corner. Now what do I do? Lorraine talked about digging the rock out from behind that camper tire, and this would have worked.... the rock, while settled some, could still be dug. But then I thought about the best idea, that I should have thought of before the board solution..... deflate the camper trailer tire to lower it off of the roof corner.

We got the camper moved, re-inflated the tire, and then proceeded to back it into the building. I did have to lower the radio antenna on the camper as it would have been too tall to fit. It was a very tight fit through the 10x10 garage door, and one you have to work patiently with so as not to damage the building or the camper. But we did get it done, and set it up right in the middle of the building.

So what was the damage? The building was just a small scuff and slightly bent steel... not a big deal and could have been worse. But on the camper, I had created a small rip in the roof's membrane. I think the damage to the camper bothered me more than the building. At the same time, the damage could have been much worse than it ended up being to both the camper and the building.

At the same time, I was a bit irked at myself. I could sit and be upset, but I am not sure what that ever accomplishes. So, it was back to work starting to put up solar-powered exterior security lights. I installed three of them, all on the porch. One faces the 8x8 door, one points out to the north, and one points out to the west. Since it was late in the day and the solar panels did not get any light, we were not able to see how they work..... or if they work at all. Maybe I should read the instructions?

After the day we had, I did not feel like cooking supper we had brought. Instead, Lorraine went into town to get some Domino's pizza. It did the job.

Started putting together materials for a camp fire and got that going. Bryan and Amy pulled in near 7:00. A night of campfire and laughs, and a decent night of sleep.

I was awake early in the morning, so I took off to take care of trail cameras and get them ready to take pictures in the winter. This means new batteries and fresh SD cards. Then it was back to the building, where Amy worked on cooking our breakfast burritos while I packed up the truck and Lorraine cleaned out the camper.

Bryan and Amy hit the road around 9:30 AM, and we took off about an hour later after getting things buttoned up and ready for winter. I know I will be making at least one more trip to get the bass boat there and in the building, but this time of year I always prepare for the fact that something could occur that causes us not to be able to get up there again.

The fall colors were probably some of the prettiest colors I have seen. We must have had the right amount of rain at the right time. On our way to our exit at the Dells to Baraboo, we decided to get off early and see other beautiful colors. So, we did not take our normal path home, and while it took us an extra two hours, we had the time and happy we took the time to do this. Why am I always in such a hurry? Go slower and enjoy the journey, dude!