Building inroads

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, this place in Hawaii where we have come to live started out as a blank slate for us. I mean, REALLY blank…..no buildings, no electricity, and no driveway (unless you count the well established pig trails).

Our first steps in making a survey of possible building sites necessitated cutting my way through the fern and guava tangle using that mainstay of all jungle explorers…..the machete. Next, pick a route, any route, make your best guess as to where you might end up, then cut down anything within reach of the chainsaw.  Now it's time to bring out the big guns….the backhoe.

Having a machine like the backhoe to do the heavy lifting (or digging, as it were) has been an immense time and labor saver, although all that easy access to dirt moving muscle makes it somewhat more likely to bite off more than you can chew. A backhoe is a sort of jack-of-all-trades, able to do many things, but it's not necessarily the perfect tool for the job. The smart people hire a bulldozer and get the job done in a few days rather than fiddle around for a month, picking along with the hoe. To use this one machine as the sole means of building a road or leveling a house pad is folly so, of course, that's exactly how I choose to go about the task. It works for me, but it's not what I recommend to others, haha.

Try to choose a path that will entail the least amount of material removal, then muck out as much as you can.

I filled the deepest holes with a combination of rocks and old tree stumps, but the style credit goes to Renee. Some sections of the drive remind me of the Inca trail, with carefully placed basaltic lava filling and leveling things out as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this is only a foundation course. The next step buries all that excellent rock work underneath a bed of red cinder, the go-to choice on a volcanic island with no gravel deposits.

The cinder is the highly aerated ash and molten rock that gets blasted out of a volcano during eruptions. It's lightweight and very friable, crushing down to fill in the nooks and crannies amongst the larger stones. It looks cool and comes in either red or black, although red is harder and is the more preferred for roads. Some of the black cinder is light enough to float on water and it makes a popular growing medium.

Red and green….looking a bit like Christmas last winter.



As we wander over the land, we are trying to maintain a particular vision in how we are altering the landscape. Ellie had her eye on this naturally wet spot as the perfect site for digging a pond.

And after a few hours of digging, she was finished.

Next comes rock work, plantings, and the addition of some mosquito fish to keep the biting insects in check.





After 500’ of road building fun, we reached to a tolerably level area, a good enough spot to build a quick and dirty shelter.

What's that? You hear banjos?



Building here has been a trial all my own. I've had such grand ideas and desires, clever solutions and design/build concepts to explore, none of which have happened yet. I'm embarrassed to say that expediency has been the primary motivator, just trying to get a better roof over our heads. This area was only intended to be a dry spot to work but, as these things tend to go, we've been living in this shed for over a year now. Time for a real roof, ya think?


Stay on the trail a bit longer and the guava eventually thins out, getting replaced by Uluhe ferns and sparsely placed native Ohia trees.

Some date palms, a few soon-to-be monster Albizia trees, Hapu'u tree ferns and sunshine.

The perfect place for another structure, lightly built and none too well at that (although I'm far from being finished). I lugged in every stick, on my shoulder the entire way, so some big concessions were made in material choices and dimensions.

This too was intended as a quickly built and dry place to work, the primary building site is even further down the trail. We'll see how that plays out. In the meantime, it's a nice place to string a hammock.

The sunny spots attract a different kind of wildlife.

I swear, most of what we are building here ends up being taken over by the critters.

Her favorite nesting spot.

Eggs and tools, two things that might be better off separated, but at least we are getting the eggs more often than the rats do. Finally, somebody is earning their keep!

January progress.....a bit, anyways.

 

Perhaps it's my Midwestern blood, but wintertime is still a period of hibernation for me. This, despite our now living in Hawaii with its tropical climate and long(er) day length. At least that's what I'm telling myself.....surely that's a good excuse for my lack of progress on the home-building front?

 

 

"So.....what have you guys been up to, anyways?"

 

 

—*NOTE TO SELF*—

When buying salvaged roofing material, try not to choose the stuff that has 20-odd layers of old paint on it, no matter how cheap it may be. Remember and acknowledge how obsessive you can get when picking old chips of peeling paint from a surface.

 

 

The wire wheel/grinder combo might be faster than going it all by hand power, but not by too much.

 

 

"But wait......I thought that you guys didn't have electricity?!?"

 

Please bear witness to our emergency generator. Not only is it huge and inefficient, it's also one of the most expensive ways to create watts, haha.

 

 

The jumper cables run into a tote, inside of which is a deep cycle battery that acts as a buffer for heavy surge loads, and from that, to moderately cheap 2000 watt sine wave inverter.

 

 

The inverter is mounted to a piece of plywood, keeping both the inverter and battery from shifting around, and elevating everything from any acid spills or inadvertently accumulated rainwater. In the picture, you are looking at the side of the inverter, that silver thing under my multi-meter. The silver box looks pretty boring, but that's where the magic happens, Direct current (DC @12 volts) being altered into its Alternating (AC @120 volts) wave form.

 

The whole setup is pretty ghetto, but that's how we roll. It works, though I try to use it as little as possible, it being a severe impediment to my being able to brag about how we don't need their stinking electricity anyhow, thank you very much....haha.

 

 

There's more fun where that came from.

 

 

 

The beautiful Renee has been doing the real work for the last month, finding the perfect place to put all of the lava she digs up.

 

 

 

 

 

The Okinawan sweet potatoes love it here.

 

 

Paths and terraces.

 

 

 

It's a little hard to discern, but she has been weaving the guava whips into a sort of living fence. Soon the thin shoots will be sending out new vertical growth, turning this surface into a wall of solid green.

 

 

The walls surround an area of dappled sunlight, perfect for growing some of the more shade tolerant plants.

 

 

She weaves the stiff Aluhe fern stems, wrapping ever more of the thin Guava shoots, around and around......

 

 

.....hangs them in the trees, then tucks in an Orchid (actually vice-versa, but you get the gist).

 

 

Homemade planters for epiphytes, pretty cool.

 

 

I've been incrementally cutting my way through the tangles of Guava, swinging the chainsaw in an arc roughly 6" above the ground.

 

 

It doesn't look like much, but this area, only 20' to a side, created a stack of Guava nearly the height of my head.

 

 

We separate the shoots by size, smallest to large, then cutting off the branched top, to be composted. I see an army of stick chairs here....

 

...or maybe a stick house?

 

 

 

We are roofing the structure with clear polycarbonate sheets in the interest of keeping the weight as low as possible.

 

 

It's also cool, because when you lie on your back and look to the sky, it's as near a thing as having no roof at all.

 

Initially, I have screwed the intersecting pieces together. Then, after the branches have had a bit of time to shrink some, I lash things tight, using lengths of nylon seine twine. Screws alone won't suffice for long, the forces of the bending and shrinking sticks being enough to snap the stiff deck screws here and there. The twine square lashing stiffened things up remarkably, tying the structure into a springy and resilient whole. I like that.

 

What maybe doesn't show in the photo, is that there are approximately 10 bazillion intersecting branches in this glorified 12' x 23' gazebo, and many of the lashing are stacked one atop the other. Access gets awfully tight in spots, so progress is slow. I try to tie each lashing perfectly, and despite having already done this *many* times already, I still occasionally take one apart that just doesn't look right.

 

Aside from the time involved in doing a good job, there is also the concern over UV degradation, bring roofed with clear panels and all. The lashing need to be coated with something, paint most likely, but I can already see that as another one of those projects that gets delayed too long. The proper time to coat the lash is...immediately!

 

You also might notice that I'm using unpeeled logs. Initially, this was to be just a quick way to get a roof over my head, a dry spot to work. Famous last words, right? I started out peeling the sticks, stripping them of their bark, but being in somewhat of a hurry (ie: lazy), I swiftly transitioned into using the stock just as it came, bark and all. Within just days, I noticed something interesting though. The sticks that had been peeled were immediately lunched by the ferocious powder post beetles that we've got here, whereas the unpeeled stuff remains untouched to this day. The bark and leaves of this Guava contain so many tannins, nobody wants to eat it. Working the stuff instantly turns steel tools black, and makes your clothing look as though you've been crawling around under your car, dropping the transmission or something. This stuff will make a great ebonizing, purple/black dye....That's for another day though.

 

 

So what have I *really* been doing?

 

 

Mostly sitting on my ass, filling page upon page in my "Book of bad ideas".

 

See, the real problem here is that I've got too many options. I'm extremely adept at making the most of little, but now that most of the typical restraints have been lifted, I'm at a loss for direction. We have money, and we have space, but no map. Each route has its attractions, particularly so, as our standards are very low, haha...... Or are they?

 

To be honest, I'm finding that building with sticks and branches is....unfulfilling. Renee has forbidden me from tearing the "stickhaus" down and starting anew, but I swear....given half a chance....

 

I'm spoiled, I admit it, but working on a project that doesn't fully resonate within, it's draining. Why don't I build what I REALLY want to build? Well, what I've been obsessing about, apparently it hasn't been done before, at least according to Google. I consider myself fairly adept at sifting through multiple search term queries, and I know that the truth is out there, but I'm not finding much inspiration.

 

What I want to build is a system, something that I've touched on before, a modular format, prefab, portable when need be, type of small structure design. Individual components must be portable by one strong individual or two, if your hermit has a friend. The standard size of sheet goods is 4'x8', too big a fit for most cars, so smaller multiples are required. I want it to look nice too, so I'm intending to use as much "real" wood as possible, only resorting to plywood and it's like if it's worth enduring its unfriendly working qualities.

 

A small and efficient shelter, low cost, and not too difficult for the average person to build. Let it be nice to look at as well, and you might be seeing them tucked into cozy secret corners, without drawing too much fuss by the neighbors (and authorities). Not a "tiny" treasure McMansion, nor a 1970's Swedish erector set house. Legos color scheme is too bright, so no love there either.

 

There is no way that I am the first here, but really.....

Posted with Blogsy

Weekend progress

 

Renee, being the hard working girl that she is, has a "real" job that occupies here throughout the week, has her crunching numbers, strings of crazy long gene sequences AND teaching a class and students as well. Thank god she can relax and take things easy on the weekend.

 

 

Renee is also like a little excavator in human form, and I don't know where she finds the energy (She's nuclear powered, I suspect).

 

On Saturday, she had a vision, then promptly started to make it real.

 

 

Or maybe she just couldn't stop digging. The woman is, seriously, just a digging maniac. Ellie is searching for leaves, and the neighbors dog is searching for Ellie.

 

We've got soil in abundance, lying all rich, loose and crumbly atop the lava. The Aluhe ferns that were here before, blanketed the area with leaves and other decomposing matter for the last few hundred years, eventually producing this wonderful soil. Soil is truly an amazing resource, something that too many of us take for granted, but not us. We are conserving every bit that we can. After living here for nearly a year, we have seen just how rare this type of earth is. More common is to have the barest skin of dirt lying on top of large sheets of lava. This is the first place that we've been where you can actually use a shovel.

 

It is common here to ask, "How is your land? Is there soil?"

 

 

Ellie has been making birds from various leaves found in the forest. This one must be a cardinal, judging from the crest on its head (the next step will be working on camera focus :-)

 

 

Our baby cardinal friend lives here somewhere, and it's my hope that if we would start laying out some food, we'd see him again. None of the cardinals are about, so there must be some better food elsewhere.

 

 

Dogs and dirt.....what's the attraction?

 

 

I'd say that she is hunting up a gopher, but I'm pretty sure that we don't have them here in Hawaii, certainly not on this side of the island. She's just loving the dirt, digging and helping out.

 

 

This is the place on Sunday.

 

 

She dug out a big pocket of soil, separated out the jumbled chunks of lava, then layed a solid base for a parking area. She's a monster.

 

 

This entire island we live on, soil, trees, food, animals, everything that we know and see every day....it's just a skin atop rock. Everywhere, the entire world is like that, but it's something that we've forgotten, most places. This miniscule layer is all that we have, that gives us life and sustains us. The big island of Hawaii is new, geologically speaking, and here we are reminded constantly that life is a short and wonderful thing.

 

The soil is life, and the lava underneath is the origin, the beginning. These volcanoes erupt continually, lava breaking free onto the surface and covering everything, then quieting down again for 10 years...100 years.... 1,000 years....

 

When the lava flows, it often covers, but doesn't always scour the earth. It buries. So what we are seeing as we dig our little garden bed, is evidence of a millenia of events. The lava comes, then life gradually colonizes. The native Ohia trees are some of the first to return, having evolved to be able to live in thin soil, putting out thin strands and clumps of aerial roots to aid them in obtaining the water they need, water from the air itself. Eventually you get a mature Ohia forest, which is what we have now. Then the lava returns, covers it all, and the cycle begins again.

 

Our little garden is thin lava, broken by time, atop more lava which is also broken, atop probably more lava. There have been many different lava flows here, and there will be more.....probably. The island is still moving, and as it drifts further from the thin spot on the Earth's mantle that caused the island to form in the first place, the island will cease to grow.

 

Anyways......dirt and rocks. Lots of dirt. Renee is in heaven.

 

 

She has exposed two ridges of lava, and right down the center, she is seeing in her mind a waterfall cascade of steps, the early stages of which you can see here, from the side.

 

 

 

 

The broken lava is an absolute joy to work with, coming in a wealth of different shapes, many flat surfaces, and some with square corners.

 

 

If you've done rock work before, you know that square corners are like gold, something to be saved and hoarded for the future. The rock above isn't a corner per se, but is even more unusual, shaped like an inverted "L". It's also blue in color. Renee is using blue and silver stones for the steps, placing the red and gray rock elsewhere.

 

 

And up above, she planted some Okinawan sweet potato runners.

 

 

This is a new favorite of mine, though I've never been a fan of sweet potatoes. This plant is gardener's ease personified, just drop it on the ground, place a few handfuls of dirt here and there on the runner stem and that's it. It will soon grow and spread everywhere that you let it, and it also works well as a cover crop/living mulch. The young greens and shoots are eaten steamed, and taste somewhat similar to spinach, minus that uncomfortable oxalic acid feel in the mouth. VERY tasty, both the greens and the purple fleshed tuber.

 

Part of being a good gardener (which I am emphatically NOT), is knowing what grows where. This is a new climate, and to be rigid in our thinking and demand that all of our old favorites be grown in the garden, well, that's just absurd. Normal potatoes, lettuce, tomatos, peas....there is a long list of what doesn't like to grow here, primarily due to the high rainfall. There is an entire new world of plants that DO love it here though, and "right living" comes from that understanding. Effect change where you can.....don't try change the plants (because they won't listen), change your diet instead.

 

 

 

I have a different set of time constraints than my wife, so I get to work on the new place most every day. I start out as I usually do, by clearing the building site of undergrowth, then piling materials dead in the middle where they are guaranteed to be underfoot, whether I need them or not.

 

 

I ran a stringline around a rough perimeter going from tree to tree at an arbitrary height above grade. The slope right here is about 1/10 and, where the patch of ground that Renee has been working has lots of soil, this spot has essentially none. That's why I chose it. It's a horrible spot to grow things. Keep life where it is most happy.

 

 

Raise the camera a bit, and the strings come into alignment.

 

 

The lines are level, but the camera is not.

 

 

 

Some of you might recognize some joinery here.

 

 

 

 

So honest to God, I drive myself crazy. This is supposed to be a simple elevated platform, a level surface from which to work, and a basic tin roof. I'm not even planning for walls. 80% of the materials are ugly and salvaged and I'm planning on using guava sticks for the roof members. A long service life is not a consideration, and take-apart modular is a minor design theme. I finally caved and bought a screwgun, so screws are here, nails are here, and I should just bang this out, right?

 

To all of you who know me.....I can hear you. Yeah, right, sure.

 

It starts with a simple splice......

 

This lumberyard 2x6 would feel so much nicer in the hand if it were planed....

 

Height above grade will be over 36" at the most likely side of approach, so maybe if the nicer sticks were used on that side, maybe introduce some curved elements......

 

And so it goes. I can't help myself. People kindly (and sometimes NOT so kindly, haha) call me a perfectionist, but it's not true. I'm an incrementalist. Perfection is an illusion that can never be attained, but nearly everything can be made just *sliiigghtly* better.

 

Naturally, this drives others crazy too.

 

 

 

I chose a site with a minimum of existing growth because I don't want to disturb the area any more than necessary but, because the guava is:

• A) Considered a pernicious invasive that everyone wants to kill anyway, and....
• B) is also a lively and resilient growing machine, that....

..... I start envisioning using the few existing trees as the foundation posts of the structure and extending up to serve as supports for the roof as well. These things are so tough, that I fully expect them to bounce right back, sending out new lateral growth, despite being viciously "topped". And if they die.....well, I was going to cut them down anyway.

 

But what if they DO live? Wouldn't it be cool if the structure was as "alive" as possible? Not only is the guava a vigorous and hardy tree, it's also enthusiastically innosuculate, meaning that it is self-grafting. If you want to weave a living wall, there would be few better choices of plant to begin with.

 

In any event, while I entertain grand thoughts, I also rig a tarp overhead, to keep the tools dry.

 

 

The sumi ink that I'm using for layout works great on damp lumber, but if the stick is actually wet, the ink just runs and bleeds. If I swipe the area with a rag, then lay down a very fine line, the ink will set enough to hold, but it's not the same as say, marking on dry wood. FYI, for those of you working in the rain. Fresh cut green wood, no problem. Compared to pencil, there still is no comparison. A pencil only works well on dry lumber, and it's been nearly 6 months since I've touched one for carpentry. I used one the other day...for about 2 seconds. How the hell do you cut to such a fat f***ing line, haha?!

 

 

 

I also built a new sharpening station.

 

 

Haha.....nice, huh?! I miss using good stones though. My standards are currently low.

 

Posted with Blogsy

A second chance

In December of 2014, Eliana, Renee and I moved from the cold, windy and wet Oregon coast, to the Big Island of Hawaii (the Hilo side) for Renee to take a postdoctoral position with the University of Hawaii Hilo. Although Renee had been to Hawaii in the past, this side of the island was new to her. This is my first exposure as well.

Hilo has the reputation as being a VERY wet place, actually one of the top-whatever cities worldwide in terms of annual precipitation. The numbers don't lie, this place gets phenomenal amounts of rain, the more so the further up you go in elevation. Our houshold landed outside the small town of Mountain View, about 12 miles to the south/southwest of Hilo, and at an elevation of about 1,400', the rainfall maps suggest that this place gets a deluge of somewhere around 258" of rain annually. That's about 20 FEET of rain,hahahahahaha ***insert maniacal laughter***! At least it is warm here.

In the 8 months time that we have been here, we've all learned a lot about some lesser known aspects of living a rather unconventional lifestyle. While much of this knowledge is particular to this area (like living 24/7 outside, but with no real fear of freezing), some other aspects will have broader application that might be interesting and fun, particularly to those of you out there who aspire towards a less energy intensive life.

A long time ago, I lived for two years time completely off-grid, though then it was in the wilds of northwestern Montana state, as well as being in the dark ages of the communication and alternative energy scene. This was back in 1990 about, and the internet thing was just beginning to ramp up. Online shopping was still viewed with extreme suspicion, and the only real companies out there were the already established brick and mortar guys, so prices were the same as what you'd find in a catalog. Solar was the "grail", but was still REALLY expensive, and there just weren't any cheap Chinese alternatives. I was so poor, the point was moot, but I was always dreaming.

I lived way out in the sticks on 20 acres of trees, between the small town of Thompson Falls and the even tinier town of Trout Creek, out on Blue Slide Road with the other white trash. Though I didn't have running water or electricity, while I was there a new phone company opened up and offered to run line in for free, so for part of that time I was in the ironic situation of being able to chat online with people on the other side of the world in new Zealand, yet I didn't have a flush toilet. What little power I did have came from 4 ,6-volt batteries that I charged using an ever rotating series of continually breaking generators.

Years after that adventure, I became enraptured with the idea of sailing around the world, living on a sailboat and just doing whatever it is that I normally do, which is work on stuff. They say that sail cruising is the adventure of constantly working on boats in exotic locations, and in my experience that saying holds true. The perfect life for someone like me! Sailboats are like small, self-sufficient nations, with limited contact with the greater world. ALL people living on cruising sailboats are living an alternative energy lifestyle, and boats run the range from having no power at all, to some boats having all the comforts of home.

All of this blather is to say......I've been there, done that. I'm not totally new to this stuff, I have a clue. I am a MacGuyver, and I can fix most anything. I'm not saying that I'm some alternative living "rockstar" actually, because it has been my far too many mistakes that have taught me so much. I wish that I had been smart enough to write stuff down, so that I didn't need to make the same mistakes over again.

Maybe THAT is why our move to Hawaii, how we've been living for the last 8 months, has been so especially odd. I've done so much the "wrong" way, put my family through such ridiculous levels of deprivation, it defies description. That they still talk to me is a small miracle, and testament to how amazingly wonderful Renee and Ellie are. You both are truly beyond compare, and I can't express how fortunate I feel to be with you both.

Renee is so wonderful in fact, that she is giving me a second chance. An opportunity to do this the "right" way, to design a simple, economical, and beautiful life.

We bought a place. 3 acres on a dead end road,lots of trees. Cash, no loans, ours for the family in perpetuity. Our fingers are still crossed, as we just heard that there might be some difficulty with the title, but hopefully things will work out.

Here it is.

This two-track is Napua street.

 

Ellie is standing at pole 7.

One of the amazing things about living on the wild side of Hawaii (as opposed to the other, poopy side, with the sun and too many people) is that you can tell people that your address is "the first driveway on the left, after pole #7", and that's OK. Ellie says, to tell you that there is a wood-spirit hiding somewhere in this picture, if you look closely.

Lots of green stuff.

 

 

 

Thankfully there is one area right by the road, that should be fairly easy to clear. Perfect for a parking area, maybe a little workshop.

That might be wishful thinking, as it seems like the only reason that there wouldn't be any trees right here would be because underneath all of that lovely Uluhe fern (Scientific Name: Dicranopteris linearis)......that's probably solid lava there.

 

It's funny, looking for property in these undeveloped areas. The photos of the places are often just walls of greenery. There's just not a good way to photograph this stuff, and because the area closest to the road gets such good sunlight, the growth is typically extra dense.

 

Once you bust through the green wall, the land has a little more room to breathe.

Walking in this is still VERY challenging, as the guava trees can easily form impenetrable thickets. This day, Ellie and I grabbed the tablet with built-in GPS and tried to map out the property boundaries. Not the best, but better than nothing.

 

 

Much to Ellie delight, there is a significant population of wild pigs that live in the area. They have a bad rep, for digging up yards looking for anything edible. Here is what is referred to as, "pig damaged forest".

The pigs (wild pheasants,too) are one of the principal culprits in the spread of the Guava trees, eating the fallen fruit then planting the seeds, pre-fertilized. If you have pigs in the area, you've got guava too.

 

So much of life is about how you deal with your perception of "undesirable aspects. People hate the pigs because they dig up their gardens, foul their lawns, wreck our carefully planned landscaping. It will be one of our challenges, to find ways to plant that will guide the pigs around and elsewhere.

 

Ellie is happy that there are pigs, because it is one of her greatest wishes to hunt wild pigs.....dreams of killing the largest boar, using only a spear. WTF? We aren't hunters, don't have guns or walls covered with animal heads, but as soon as Ellie learned that there was just the slightest possibility of us moving to Hawaii, she began researching hunting upportunities. Strange creature that she is, she has been a hunter since she hit the ground. Go figure.

 

 

 

It's not all Guava trees. There are many of the large and extremely slow growing native 'Ohi'a Lehua (Scientific Name: Metrosideros polymorphism).

Back in here, I see a lovely big tree, but I've no idea what it is.

 

Very interesting and distinctive bark, but I haven't found a match yet. 30' main stem, then lateral branching. At a guess, 60-70' tall, and the overstory is too thick for me to see which leaves belong to which plant.

 

Doesn't really matter, because the GPS says it's probably on the neighbors property anyways. I was having a REALLY hard time staying on track. The jungle is seriously thick.

 

 

 

There are a number of areas where the lava is fissures, creating wonderful places for trolls to hide.

 

 

 

 

Hapu'u fern (Scientific Name: Cibotium spp.)

This tree fern is well over 12' tall, but the base is obscured by the Uluhe.

 

 

By now I've been in here for over an hour. The property dimensions are very long and skinny, a so-called "spaghetti lot", 125'x 1045'. Of the 1045' depth, I've MAYBE seen 300' of it, and I doubt that anyone else has either. These trees are upwards of 400 years old, some of them, and this area has never been logged/farmed/developed in any way. The current owner has never even seen the place.

 

 

It's going to take a machete at the least, before I can see more, as I've gotten as far in as I can. Stopped dead by the thickness of the ferns, and the Uluhe are growing taller than I can see over, at least 6' tall.

 

I hold the camera over my head, point it in the likely direction, and take a few photos.

 

Now you know as much as I do about the property. Seriously, these pictures are all we have, haha. What's back there? There's still about 800' we haven't seen.

 

 

On my way back to the car.....it's a good thing I've got the GPS, as I was getting completely disoriented, absolutely turned around.

 

I find a couple of small pools of standing water.

Now we know why there are so many mosquitos here, haha. Ellie's psyched, hoping for bullfrogs, researching aquaculture.....she's now planning on raising Tilapia fish.

 

So many fun things to do!

 

 

 

So.....

 

I screwed up the first time, planned for the right things, just not at the right times. I can do better. This time....we hit the ground running.

Posted with Blogsy