Category: Camping, Hiking and Cabins

Last summer we took a family trip to to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We knew we wanted to end up in Omaha (don’t judge) and based on my Southwest Airlines points, decided to begin our trip in Colorado.

We drove from Denver to Cheyenne, narrowly missing the Frontier Days celebration for which the town is famous. A highlight of our Cheyenne visit was touring the state house. We even saw some rodeo champions taking photos on the steps!

The Wyoming state capital dome

Scottsbluff National Monument, gateway to the West

Our next stop was Scottsbluff National Monument in Nebraska. I went to graduate school in Nebraska and had always wanted to visit Scottsbluff. Since Omaha is nearly 7 hours away it just never happened. Fast forward 20 years and we decided to take a detour to Scottsbluff. If you can, you should too!

Oregon Trail

The grassland stretches out like an ocean. We arrived at dusk and the sun setting in the west was like something out of a movie. I have ancestors who traveled the Oregon Trail during the westward migration and seeing the trail extending towards the horizon moved me. The signs warning of rattlesnakes were a reminder of how brave these pioneers were.

We stayed at a really interesting hotel in nearby Gering, Nebraska. There isn’t too much nearby and you could probably do the Scottbluff museum and hike and move on but we arrived later in the day and opted to hike first thing, before the heat set in. As an aside, we visited at the end of July, during a heat wave. Coming from Virginia, it didn’t seem that bad to us as the humidity was very low. We did make sure to have a lot of water with us both in the car and while we were hiking. It is easy to get dehydrated, especially when you are used to high humidity.

The hike to the top of the bluff is fairly steep (though paved and easy to navigate) and very scenic. The Saddle rock trail leads from behind the visitor’s center to the top of the bluff. Once you reach the top, there is another loop round where you can see the changing topography from east to west. I thought this was a great hike, especially if you get out early and get to see the sunrise!

starting up the trail
View from the top

South Dakota- Rankin Ridge Trail

Since we already hiked the Scottsbluff trail and we were heading to Custer State Park for the evening, we opted to stop for a short hike along the way. We used the restrooms at Wind Cave National Park and continued on to the Rankin Ridge trail. A storm was rolling in and the 1 mile loop seemed perfect for the time allowed. After the very dry and nearly tree-less hike in Nebaska that morning, it was cool (both literally and figuratively) to see the ponderosa pine and green hills on the South Dakota trail. Easy to follow and well-marked, the Rankin Ridge trail highlights an old fire tower at the top. The views are specatacular and we even got to see lightening as we scurried past the tower!

Where to stay in Custer State Park?

I don’t plan my trips years in advance. Sometimes they are only planned a few weeks in advance. I am sure that more organized people can give better advice about where to stay on vacation. We cobbled together one night stays in 3 different parts of the park and I actually think it gave us a unique experience and allowed for better exploration of the park. Perhaps this is an excuse to make up for my lack of pre-planning but it worked for us!

Blue Bell Lodge

We spent our first night in a cabin at Blue Bell Lodge. I always buy food before I enter into these large parks so that I am not hostage to the long lines and overpriced food. There was a small kitchen the a stove top, tiny fridge and a sink. We made pasta and had cereal in the morning. I have a collapsible cooler (bought from Costco) and bought a freezer pack at Walmart when we landed.

The cabin was nice, I lucked out and had a pretty private site, some of the other cabins were close together. I like my privacy and this cabin had a nice view from the porch

Driving the Wildlife Loop at Custer State Park

There a few highlight on this trip and driving the Wildlife Loop at dusk was one of them. As mentioned earlier, there were some strong storms that went the the area just after our hike. We drove up to the cabin and unloaded and after the storm, we went for a drive. I had read that the WIldlife Loop can be very crowded during the day and that much of the wildlife isn’t actually out during the day. The storm cleared out the crowds and we had much of this beautiful drive to ourselves. Then it was us and the Bison!

Wildlife Loop at Dusk
not a wildlife photographer

Mount Rushmore was not the highlight of the trip

Let me begin by saying that I don’t like crowds. I like to hike and I like to see things. I don’t like to hike to see crowds. While Mount Rushmore is cool to see, you can pretty much see it from the road. There were so many bus loads of people it was hard to fathom where they all came from , especially after our scenic and quiet drive through the bison herds the night before. If you are intent on ticking Mount Rushmore off of your list, go early to beat the crowds. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. There are so many beautiful places nearby, don’t spend too much time on this stop!

Seriously, you can see it from the road.

Custer State Park Hikes- Lover’s Leap Trail

Lover’s Leap was a nice trail, around a 4 mile loop. When we hiked it last year, the 2nd half of the loop, going clockwise, was pretty overgrown and there was a lot of poison ivy. If I were to do this hike again, I would do it as an out and back from Lover’s Leap. Or wear pants. As mentioned, we were there during a heat wave so we were wearing shorts.

The State Game Lodge was our least favorite place to stay in Custer State Park

Perhaps these rooms have been updated since we stayed. The check in was unfriendly at best. The room is very basic, considering the cost and was definitely a disappointment compared to our other accommodations. If you have no other option, then this is a perfectly adequate room, it was just a little musty and tired and quite noisy if you are on the ground floor.

A tad claustrophobic.

Needles Highway, Black Hills Driving

My husband was very excited to drive the Needles highway. The tunnels and turns are terrifying. The landscape is so wild that it looks like you are on the moon. This is a must-do but be careful, the roads are narrow and people are stopping all of the time. Here is a video of us driving through the “needles eye!”

If you only have time to do one hike in South Dakota make it the Black Elk Peak

We love to hike, we aren’t “mountaineers” or huge risk takers but I always enjoy seeing something new. The mountains of South Dakota are very interesting, they looks like drip castles. Despite the heat, we enjoyed this hike, definitely a trip highlight! Make sure you bring plenty of water because you are hiking the highest point east of the Rockies!

There are many different trails to get to the tower at Black Elk Peak. We took trial #9 from behind the Sylvan Lake and returned back on #4, taking the detours to Cathedral Spires and Little Devil’s Tower. Little Devil’s Tower has very steep rocks and I found it a little scary to climb.

The summit of Black Elk Peak is spectacular, find a flat spot and grab a seat. Take a well deserved rest and enjoy the scenery!

Sylvan Lake Lodge, a room with a view

There is an acutal lodge here but we stayed in one of the studio cabins. Though small, the spectacular scenery makes this a worthwhile place to stay. There is a small fridge and a microwave. You can walk to the lake, we ran the loop trail around the lake. There is easy access to the Black Elk Peak trail from the lake. The view from this cabin made up for the lack of space. Parking is tight, we pulled in right next to the picnic table.

Staying in three different areas of Custer State Park allowed us to explore without back tracking. The Blue Bell Lodge gave us good access to some of the lower trails of the park as well as the Wildlife Loop. Sylvan Lake is close to Needles Highway and to Black Elk Peak. Custer is a cute little town with quite a few restaurants, Keystone is very touristy but we liked Hill City. There is a fantastic German restaurant in the quaint downtown of Hill City called the Alpine Inn. We had a great lunch there, it is very popular. We arrived just as they opened for lunch and there was quite a wait by the time we left!

I took these photos from the back of the Sylvan Lake Lodge at sunset, it was magical! South Dakota is a unique place to hike and explore!

This was the first half of our adventure. Road trips are great becasue you can pack all kind sof stuff in your car. But what do you do when you are flying to another destination to take your road trip? Here are some tips for a successful road trip, especially when you are flying to your destination!

How to pack for a road trip when you are renting a car at your destination

  • Bring water bottles or buy them when you land, insulated are a must in warm weather
  • Buy a lot of water, keep gallons in the trunk, refill you bottles as needed, I also buy some smaller bottles to bring as extra water for hikes. They are also great to freeze when you have that option in a hotel, this allows you to keep cold things cold and then you have cold water to drink!
  • When you land, have a list of things to buy at your favorite superstore, make this ahead of time so you don’t panic shop and forget crucial items. For example, I buy sunscreen, bug spray, hand wipes, chlorox wipes, pepper spray and cheap towels (they are great to sit on and you never know when you might need them!)
  • At the superstore, buy your non perishable food items, granola bars, nuts, tuna (with a pull tab.) I like to buy lemons to make tuna salad and a small container of olive oil and vinegar to make dressing. I also buy paper towels, ziplock bags, plastic silverware (can be rewashed), paper plates and bowls. Cereal, peanut butter, jelly and bread will get you through a lot of meals I also buy a refreeze-able cold pack or two. Apples and clementines are great to have in the car.
  • I bring a small collapsible cooler on the plane and then buy cold items as needed, a sealed pack of deli meat, lettuce and small container of milk can be kept cold and brought from one hotel to another.
  • I am a light sleeper, I never know what the bed situation will look like from place to place so I bring this camping air mattress with with me. This bed is currently listed as out of stock but there are many other like this to choose from. I like that it has an integral hand pump, this allows for easy inflation without electricity. I also bring a sleeping bag liner as a compact way to have an extra set of sheets! This is a narrow bed and can fit into almost any hotel room. If someone needs their own bed, this is an easy solution!
  • Eye masks and ear plugs help everyone get a better night sleep!

Next up, skip the lines and head to Nebraska for your authentic ranch experience!

Yes. Shortest. Post. Ever.

Just kidding, I have so much more to say! I knew the Grand Canyon would be vast, some might even say “grand,” but I wasn’t prepared for the spectacular beauty. The immensity viewed in panorama is truly an awe-inspiring experience.

After a disappointing visit to Mount Rushmore last year (but a great trip to Custer State Park and Fort Robinson!) I was afraid that the Grand Canyon would be touristy. There were tourists, though not nearly the number I had envisioned. Most were silently awestruck as well. I have no idea what it is like to visit in the summer, but in early April, it was magical.

We also visited Sedona and had some great hikes there, I plan to blog about this in a separate post. Having spent the majority of my life on the east coast with a little under a decade of mid-west sprinkled in, I am not familiar with the desert landscape.

Even seeing cacti (or cactuses as I like to say) in the desert was thrilling for us! As we drove from Sedona into Flagstaff, I was shocked to see snow! I knew there were mountain but didn’t realize how tall the San Francisco peaks are!

The beautiful and tasty Pavlova at the Cornish Pasty Co.

We had dessert in at the Cornish Pastry Co. It was pretty empty but I can imagine that during their busy ski season, this place would be packed. I used dessert and desert in the same paragraph!

We opted to stay inside the park

Several times I almost shortened our stay at the Grand Canyon. Was it really necessary to spend 2 nights there? Could I justify the expense of staying two nights in what was essentially a “motel” room for $350+ a night? While in Sedona I came close to cancelling our second night at the Kachina Lodge. I’m glad that I stuck to our plan. Though I recognize that financially, this might not be a feasible option for many people, it was worth it to me.

Our room was a “partial canyon view.” We were on the 2nd floor of the Kachina Lodge.

How do you choose where to stay in the Grand Canyon?

I did not book this trip years in advance. I knew it was difficult to score a room within the park. I used the main page and kept checking daily for open nights. When I spotted two nights in a row in the Kachina Lodge for the week I hoped to visit, I pretty much planned the rest of my trip around that! I did not do much research about the lodge but had low expectations, especially after our Custer State Park Lodge experience (there were some good and some not so good places to stay.)

When I checked in at the next-door El Tovar hotel, I was pleasantly surprised by how charming it was. It was rustic but clean and the people were very helpful. I was originally given a room on the first floor. As a very light sleeper, I have learned that a top floor is usually my best option. Sheepishly I asked if he had a top floor room available. After a few minutes of checking back and forth, I was presented a key for a room on the 2nd of the two floor lodge. Though the lodge itself is older, the remodel has given it more of a “mission-style” lodge feel which seemed appropriate to the surroundings. The spacious room included a good sized refrigerator and cabinet area. There are no microwaves but there is a coffee pot with coffe packets provided. Having known ahead of time about the lack of microwave, Istocked up in Flagstaff at the Target. We bought the basics; cereal, milk, bread, lettuce, lunch meat, peanut butter, apples and other snacks. Preparing in this way allowed us to hike early in the morning without having to find breakfast. We also skipped the pricey food, though we had burgers one afternoon. They were ok, the service was overwhelmed and food was very slow to come out.

The Kachina and Thunderbird Lodges are situated right on the boardwalk overlooking the Grand Canyon. The El Tovar Hotel is considered the nicest of the places to stay inside the park and the rooms should have views to match. I would say that the Kachina actually has better views than the Thunderbird because it seems to be slightly higher on the hill but either way, you can’t go wrong. Especially if you are able to spring for a room with a view!

There isn’t much I can write to do justice to the emotions I felt when I first saw the Grand Canyon. It’s big. So big. For the first hour, I felt dizzy every time I looked at it. It’s like putting on a virtual reality headset where it looks real but your mind can’t make sense of what you are seeing. When we arrived, it was nearing sunset and we walked on the rim trail, taking in the changing landscape. Every cliff, gorge, rock and ravine comes alive and changes in the light. It was quiet. By 5pm there were only a handful of people walking. It was cold, temperatures dropped rapidly from the low 60’s to the 40’s.

By staying in the park we were able to walk at sunset and sunrise with very few people around. If you are able to make it happen, stay in the park, even if it is only for a night. We did an incredible and long hike down the Angel’s Rest trail. More on that later!

Hello darkness my old friend. Fall is a tough time for me, I don’t like winter and the darkness. The short days are especially difficult, I frequently joke that I am solar powered.

This fall came earlier than usual for our area. Without a prolonged “Indian Summer” I didn’t have a chance to feel tired of the heat. We never really go to say goodbye.

In years past, I have let myself get stressed out from all from all of the obligatory decorative clutter that appears in our house between October and January 1st. Now, I am embracing the mess. Or tying to.

When the days get shorter, I cook and bake more, I read more. I paint more. All of this indoor and inner reflection comes with a price, too much navel gazing, too much self-analysis.

I painted this over the weekend, I actually worked on 2 paintings side by side. Using this opportunity to tweak a few things from one to the other, playing with color and light. I am also attempting to maximize my very expensive Arches watercolor paper which comes in the most awkward sizes. Picture an angry beret-wearing, cigarette smoking cabal deciding, “Ah, yes, we shall make the papier of a useless size for any of those American frames. They shall buy beaucoup papier, cutting into even more useless scraps. Viola! C’est magnifique!

Can you tell that I took 4 years of French in high school? Or that I also took 2 years in college. It wasn’t pretty.

This painting is from a photo I took at Fairy Stone State Park early this spring. It was very cold and a storm was rolling in with darkness overtaking the light. Kind of how I feel right now.

This makes me feel cold.

I am counting down to December 21st, at least then I know they days will be getting longer. I will always love you, Summer! If you come back I won’t complain about mosquitoes. Maybe chiggers, but not the mosquitoes!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/889564041/storm-on-mountain-lake-at-sunset?ref=shop_home_active_1&frs=1

Fairy Stone State Park has beautiful lakefront cabins, some original post and beam and some modern. There are several good hiking trails, including one that travels on an old iron mining trail! Another trail goes to a scenic waterfall. The fairy stones are fun to hunt for but your best bet is to drive to the other side of the park to hunt!

We like to hike as a family. Well, my husband and I like to hike so by virtue of the “I am your parent, obey me” property, we hike as a family. I am not going to romanticize this, there is an undercurrent of whining and eye rolling when I announce we are going for a hike. I tend to do things on the spur of the moment, throw a “picnic” lunch into a bag and hit the road. Before we had the beloved shed-cabin documented here, here and here.

Room with a view!

I love this little table, it’s from IKEA and came with 4 chairs. It is made from real wood and matches our unfinished cabin! You can’t beat the price and the small foot print works well for us.

We have hiked many trails, for years I have wanted to blog about our various hikes but never got around to it. I will attempt to pick one trail and see how it goes from there. I have so many favorites but I will try to stay on topic and focus on ONE hike!

Recently we hiked to Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory. I will admit, I had images of vultures and condors soaring overhead with a dark bell-tower looming atop the mountain. It wasn’t like that. This was for us, an easy and short hike, it should be doable for most people and families. There is an elevation gain but the trail is clear and it is a steady rise to the top. Once at the top there is an observatory (not a dark tower) with several steep flights of steps. It was under construction when we went which was eavn more terrifying. There were many brave volunteers replacing the decking around the observatory.

One of the volunteers showed us the “peaks” of interest. From this observatory you can see Flat Top/Sharp Top as well as Buffalo Mountain (all of which we have hiked and are fantastic!).

Getting there:

The road in is windy, like most mountain roads. There was a Mennonite bakery with delicious hand pies (think hostess but much better) on the main road just before you turn on to . The road is paved all of the way to the parking lot ( if you hike many trails you know that sometimes the roads are very rough.) The lot is small so plan accordingly and on weekends, it fills early. There were no open spots when we arrived, we drove further down the road to turn around when we saw a group walking up what was labeled “Fire Tower Road”. We pulled over onto the very wide shoulder and checked the map.

All roads do not lead to the Observatory.

We hiked this fire road to where I thought there was a trail which would intersect with the Allegheny trail. It did not, we turned around and drove back to the trail head lot.

The hike up is an incline, but not very steep, the trail is well cleared and not a rock scramble. The elevation at the top is over 3500 ft and it was quite cool, be prepared for the lower temps in cooler weather. It would be a nice hike in summer to get away from the heat!

Clearly we need to work on posture…

It’s about a mile to the top, there was a port-a-potty just past the building but the sign on it said it was closed due to Covid. One of my troop used it and said it was particulary nasty, closed apparently meant no cleaning or emptying.

I wished it were a little more like a haunted tower with spider webs, dark clouds and menacing raptors. Maybe a quothing Raven or two.

Once you reach the top, or use the port-a-potty, you can climb on the rocks and peer over. There is a very steep drop off and no barrier so I would be very careful! Here are some views from the top and a picture of me slinking towards the top of the rock!

This is a great family hike, it is about a mile each direction, here is a longer description of the hike.

As I write this, our fall came early. I have heard of false spring but around here, there isn’t usually a false fall. The irony is not lost on me that this would have been the perfect temperature for a cross country season. My poor teenage son ran every cross country meet at 90 degrees or above last fall, this is perfect running weather.

I made a batch of chili, no I will not post a recipe or a photo (unless something disastrous happens) but my soup-based meals are usually ok. I will attempt to make cornbread, without any buttermilk substitutions. God willing, it will not taste like a 6th grade science experiment volcano.

44. Forty-four. As an age, it sounds distinctly middle-aged. We were at the cabin this weekend. As it was my birthday, my request was to spend a night at the cabin. As the leaves are changing, our view is opening up even more and it had been couple of weeks since we last visited. I knew it was going to be cold. We plan to install a wood stove, we weren’t expecting this false fall. We packed warm clothing and brought our infrared space heater. The plan was to use the generator to warm up the cabin a bit and then stay chilly but cozy overnight. When we woke up it was 42 degrees in the cabin. Warmer than outside, but not by much. The moral of this story, other than my children will have something to tell their therapists when they are older, is that I was cold. It was in the 40’s and I was cold. When the generator was fired back up and the temperature started rising to 44 degrees my husband said, “It’s 44, your are 44, if you were a temperature you would only be getting warmed up.”

That hit me. If I were 98 years old, that is pretty hot. Even 50 is cold, I probably won’t be comfortable until my mid 60’s. This weekend I will run an 8k, in my new Hokas!

Age, like temperature, is just a number and I am just getting warmed up!

We did more clearing and now Peaky Mountain has a friend!

This is a cross-over post, like when the Cosbys visited the Keatons (pretty sure that never happened but there were a lot of these type of cross-over episodes in the 80s.)

Our original interntion with the off-grid cabin was to provide our family with an active project in the midst of a global melt-down in order to maintain what little sanity my genetic code can provide for us. It was also meant to be a handy sleeping spot for the many hikes and bike trails we enjoy, typically 3 ish hours away from our home. Up until recently, my children felt like it was the equivalent of a North Korean work camp and not so much the idyllic escape or homestead I envisioned. Most of our road races were cancelled or “postponed” indefinitely this summer so I was pleased to find an in person 10k trail race in West Virginia.

This would be my second ever 10k, my family’s first even 10k race. None of us had ever run a trail race before, certainly not up a mountain in West Virginia. The start time was 10 am, leaving us ample time to use our “facilities” and drive the nearly 2 hours to the New River Gorge.

A beautiful drive! Islands in the stream, that is what we are.

We arrived at the race and filled out the Covid-19 required forms, we had our temperature checked and wore masks up to the start line.

I have never run in a trail race before and there was also a half-marathon race at the same time. They did not start us by expected finish time. I learned the hard way that you want to be in the front if you are actually planning on running up the mountain. My daughter and I “ran” the first uphill mile on a single track behind people carrying walking sticks. And walking with walking sticks. I wish I had video of the awkward running in place behind these people. I tried desperately to get around them and not fall off of a cliff. I was hopeful that my son and husband had made it past this walking stick wielding group because I know they would opt to go over the cliff rather than run in place behind this group. Death before dishonor.

My daughter is a warrior, she is only 10 but always ready to try anything! We finished strong, the trail widened up once we neared the top of the trail and we were able to actually run, finishing in the middle of the pack. My son placed 3rd overall, husband was 6th, an overall success for all of us!

Did I mention the view?

Most importantly, our worksite had become not only a cabin but a getaway!

As mentioned previously, I never camped as a child. While I have come to enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors, we realized the impracticality of spending multiple days/nights at the homestead without some sort of shelter. With the clever advent of my husband’s shed-trailer (discussed here), we eliminated much of our lugging back and forth of goods.

The anti-shaggin’ wagon

The summer of 2020 taught me many things; that I have a pretty non-existent social life as a matter of normal, daily, living, we use far too many paper towels, and my job can’t be done remotely. I also learned that when in self or state imposed isolation people buy these items in abundance: paper products, disinfecting products, wood chippers, fences and sheds. Interesting how many of the list above revolves around trees/pulp products. If you were cleaning with pine-sol, I guess it would come full circle. According to those in the business, sheds have been selling like hot cakes. Large, splintery hot cakes. I guess people are working from home and realize they can’t muzzle their children without many repercussions and are resorting to an adult wood-fort in the yard.

Shed Shopping in a Zombie Apocalypse

We considered buying a shed kit, but it was very hard to find one in stock. And it would need to delivered to the house and transported to the lot as our homestead has no delivery address. AND we would have to actually build the shed. I have been told that cost of building materials is rising sharply and doing out the numbers in my area, buying all of the lumber and hardware would be even more costly than the kit and not too far behind the “Amish” shed we eventually bought already assembled and delivered. I am a little hazy on where exactly the Amish fit in to all of this, but my son did some research and told me that all of the sheds you see for sale in the roadside shed patches come from a single factory in Louisiana. The lumber is then sent to the Mennonites where the sheds are assembled into one of several styles and distributed to their dealers. Apparently our shed was assembled by Mennonites in North Carolina, I was fact-checked by my son, so no Amish were involved in the process.

The Winning Shed

After visiting several road-side shed farms (I now see them everywhere, I assume they were always there) we were fortunate to find our dream shed close by the lot. Most of the shed places offer delivery within a 50 mile radius. We opted for a 12×20, double lofted, barn-style shed in a light color with a metal roof.

She’s a beaut, Clarke!

We had been told by multiple outlets that custom order sheds were backed up several months due to demand and the ones on the lot were being sold quickly. We purchased the shed despite not being quite sure if our site was adequately prepared or if the delivery truck could make it up the former logging road leading to our lot. My husband had had several phone conversation with the shed-manager, he was not there the day went to the shed ground, but his new trainee was there! I know she was new, we were very patient, she had no idea about how and when they could deliver our shed. The shed-lady got the shed-manager on the phone and he freaked us out by telling us they couldn’t deliver the shed if we had left any stumps. Would our hand-cleared lot pass muster? We tried showing pictures to the clueless but kind shed-lady. She agreed with us that it looked FINE. Shed manager was back-peddling. Eventually we had a verbal agreement that the dealer would refund our money if the delivery driver said they couldn’t get it up there, that’s good enough in our book! Most of our cleaning was by hand, the trees were relatively small but very dense, we had no idea how wide or flat the site would need to be for delivery of our shed.

We were told it would be about 2 weeks until delivery, we had plenty of time, or so we thought. Luckily, we are very impatient and immediately went back and cut down more trees. A neighbor stopped by and offered his backhoe services, we gladly accepted, he would return during the week to clear out the width and flatten the site a bit more. This is where my important dos and don’ts list in land clearing comes in. The dust, Ken Burns could have held off on making his Dust Bowl documentary and photographed our dusty and weary faces upon returning to our ravaged land. The wood chips and grass seed have given us hope once more.

After the 3 hour trip home, we got a call from the shed-man that they wanted to take a trial run up to the lot prior to the delivery truck making the trip. My husband talked to Roger, the backhoe man, he had returned the next day and done the additional clearing. The 3 hour trip was made again by my patient and bear-fearing husband and he led the shed-man up to the lot. We passed the shed-man test. I wasn’t there for the delivery, but my husband said it quite the production! There is a separate “rascal” type of pulling machine that places the shed on the site after it is delivered from the truck, they use concrete blocks to level the shed and Voila! No more tent camping with the bears!

Our new off-grid getaway!

At some point I will show you the treacherous, miles long, single lane gravel road we take to reach this glorious indoor/outdoor space, it is not for the faint of heart or weak-willed shed delivery people.

Avoiding bears and clearing land, tips and tidbits!

A beautiful sunrise at the homestead to start the 4th of July. It was this very clearing where I saw the bear!

Getting our Bearings

As much as one can mentally prepare to see such things, I had mentally prepared myself to see a few things, ticks, rattlesnakes and bears. With the amount of brush/thorn/possibly barbed wire we were clearing, I treated every stick like it was a snake. We had far fewer ticks than on our first day, we had sprayed the area ( I am sure this is in the environmentally incorrect way) but I can only handle so many ticks and weeks later we still seem to have bees, dragonflies and butterflies so maybe they hate ticks too. I had read much about the black bear, in Virginia it appears to be flourishing. In this reading, I found that, unlike vampires, bears do not need to be invited into your home. Black bears also like the smell of shampoo and soap, luckily we were filthy. I was brushing my teeth ( also an attractant) and attempting to spit far from our campsite when I saw something huge at the end of the clearing. Unlike thinking that every speck of dirt is a tick and that every stick is a snake, there is no mistaking a bear. The bear took one look (sniff) at my showered personage and ran swiftly into the woods. I have since seen a few tracks and dirty paw marks on my car, but no further sighting of the bear, at least not by us. The gentlemen with the backhoe who helped level a bit of our clearing to make way for the shed-cabin (a process accelerated by the bear-sighting) said the bear ran out at one point. Here is the best photo I could get of the paw prints.

I did buy bear spray in case I am unable to persuade a bear that I smell very un-soap like and my attempts to make myself noisy and larger fail.

In all seriousness, though I am still told by Google that I have zero readers, I will share my bear-minimum knowledge.

  1. Don’t eat in your tent, this shouldn’t be hard for most people but if your have a kid who likes to hide food in her back-pack “just in case,” you may need to do a pat down before bed.
  2. Don’t keep food or trash in or around your tent, nor in your car, we were told to sling a bag over a tree but that seemed crazy. I did not have a bear box but if you remember our shed-trailer, it made a good bear box.

3. Do your toothpasting/facewashing away from your tent, we walked down the driveway to spit out our paste. I am aware they sell some kind of camping toothpaste but I am winging it here.

4 Be noisy when you walk in the woods, we have two children with us most of the time, we never take a quiet walk in the woods, and that, my friend, has made all the difference.

During the great Pandemic of 20-ought, I have heard about kids withering away from lack of vitamen D. Determined to develop strong bones and immunity, I put those kids to work, we cut, we hauled. We had’t wised up to the neccesity of a wood chipper yet, or we would have chipped as well.

How many rattlesnakes do you see?

We had a mixed weather forecast over the 4th of July, we expected rain every day but wound up not having any. This was really lucky because when it did rain while we were tent camping a week or so later, we were grossly under-prepared.

My cast-iron cooking skills started to improve, my eggs weren’t so sad looking!

I have no explanation of the slingshot or the whipping cream.

To show that I am not entirely heart-less, we did take a day trip to a nearby waterfall. It was a nice hike and would have been refreshing has I thought to bring aqua socks!

We knew that we wanted to add a shed to use as a camping cabin, we also knew we had mountain views all around. Though we enjoyed our 4 nights of tent camping, we knew long term it would be more relaxing to have a dry place to stay. We picked a spot that looked relatively flat and worked our way out from there. The sheer volume and ferocity of the thorns really can’t be described, it was like something out of a fairy tale. The brambles wrapped around each tree, you had to clear them to get close to the trunk or to walk past the trees.

‘Barrow of fun!
Spoiler alert! The wheelbarrow doesn’t make it to the sequel. Timber!

After the weeding and wacking and wanton destruction of wheelbarrows, we found our view!

Hello, view!

My advice when clearing raw land

  1. Be prepared to be unimaginably dirty, I was obsessed before we left about making a camp shower, my husband thought I was crazy but I am telling you, it was a life-saver! I followed this guy’s youtube tutorial, super easy. I set it up on paver stones that I brought from my failed raised-bed garden.
  2. You can never have too many tarps, they can be used to haul brush, cover equipment, create shower curtains for step one! They are the duct tape of the animal world.
  3. Repel Tick Defense, I love this stuff! Made with Picardin, a synthetic derivative of a pepper plant, I find it very effective against ticks and chiggers. I am a bug magnet!
  4. Heavy duty gloves, buy in bulk, you will need them.
  5. We bought the “Last Woodchipper in Virginia” it seems, we had to drive to a store close to neither home nor homestead to find it. Country Pro 196-cc Kohler 3-in Steel Gas Wood Chipper isn’t cheap but when compared to renting a comparable until for any length of time, it was worth it to us. I consider Chippy to be a member of our family now, I know we would never have made the progress we made without him. In addition to eliminating our giant piles of rattle-snake den, it provides a much needed mulch layer around camp. I had no idea how important this would be until we had bare ground with no pine needles etc, the dust was unbelievably messy and when it rained, it was all mud. The mulch made a huge difference in not only our erosion control but in the cleanliness of camp.
  6. Beware of sap, I have sap in places I didn’t know could have sap. Water will not help you, not that we had running water. Alcohol based cleaners, hand sanitizers, etc are the key here. I stepped in a hug mound of sap that took every bit of my 80’s kid stepping in bubblegum know-how to get off.
  7. Bring something to relax/sit on. We had a tree- hammock (watch the sap mentioned above) and later added this crazy “inflatable hammock.” My kids describe it as sitting in a giant hot dog bun, but I like it! Sitting is a luxury when you are cleaning raw land.
Sneak Peak of peaks!

Next up: Shed Shopping!

I already felt guilty that we skipped a family tradition of celebrating the 4th of July with my husband’s family due to complicating factors of Covid-19 and various areas of civil unrest between our two locations. I felt even guiltier that our plans now included working from dawn till dusk on clearing out land to eventually put a shelter on. As I mentioned previously, we had been there a few days earleir, ink not yet dry on our e-docs, to clear out enough space for a tent and to bring up some supplies. By supplies I mean, tick spray, pruners, clippers, saws, gloves, eyewear all stored in a giant tupperware container.

As a side note, my husband very cleverly turned our harbor freight folding trailer into a mobile shed. The idea was to have a place to store our stuff until we have a space for a longer term shelter without having to haul it all back and forth. We had this trailer for years and have only used it a few times, by adding sides and a lockable top, it became a horizontal shed on wheels!

Our version of a “little red wagon”

There were some “hitches” and glitches but once the wiring was fixed, we were on our way! We took the very long way in order to avoid the highway, I followed behind in the Subaru.

Don’t want to get too close.

We got a later start then intended and when we arrived we needed to get camp set up.

  • Not very inviting, but a little weedwhacking and branch cutting helped!
  • Much better, almost justifies dragging the family to the woods over the 4th of July!

I would love to show you an instagram worthy photo of our first night at our homestead. But since I only have instagram so I can pretend I know how to use it in order to monitor my teenage son’s account, I won’t do that. I would love to show you a pintrest worthy montage complete with gingham tablecloth and picnic baskets. Instead, I will show you my left-over folding chair, plastic table hot mess that we rolled into town with.

Behold! Our luxury camp set up. I am an influencer for Tupperware and Igloo products.

We retired after a delicous feast, we even had a luxurious bathroom facility.

The master bath, there is even a wheelbarrow in case you really had to go.
The wet wipes in the photo are the last of their species, so rare that I hope to pass them down to my children’s children one day.
(Share on Pintrest)

I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that this first night I had some serious reservations. The first two visits to the lot we had many ticks on us, I was really worried about ticks heading into this camping adventure. I did find this spray at Tractor Supply (basically a hillbilly target and I mean that lovingly as a newly minted hillbilly.) It is made from some part of a chrysanthemum which, like baby oil to Jersey shore people, is beautiful but deadly (to ticks.) We had far fewer ticks, but there was still panic in the tent with one or both children bemoaning their fate of spending the night in our hot, possibly tick filled tent. We brought air mattresses as I knew the ground would be root laden and unlevel and the battery operated air pump we brought died midway through filling the first mattress. Que the whining about having to blow up air matresses by mouth and my husband and I attempt to put everything into our “mobile shed/ bear box.” Between the bickering, the heat, the fear of bears, the tiny battery operated fan which did nothing and the overwhelming prospect of clearing out acres of tick-filled trees Paul Bunyon style, I felt like I had made a huge mistake. I may have threatened to leave first thing in the morning and leave them with a babysitter if I ever darkened this forest again.

We all woke up in better spirits. I had not been eaten by a bear, our shed on wheels did not have claw marks all over it, there wasn’t a layer of ticks on my face by morning and it was actually cold at night. Too cold, and I hadn’t brought sleeping bags as it was close to 90 during the day. Live and learn, I did have one blanket that the kids shared. My husband and I froze. More on that later.

We set to work with chainsaw, loppers, clippers and started making piles. I am a worker and happiest when busy. The piles grew larger and so did our turning radius!

This is around the time we spotted the “murder hornet.”

During the tree trimming/cutting we upset some winged and angry insect which resembled a larger yellow-jacket. We named it the “murder hornet” after the Covid-19 trifecta. We may have put our tent tarp on top of their nest because in the morning, we all could hear a very loud buzzing.

After a day of work, we could finally see the mountain view we had fought through ticks and hornets and lots of thorns to get to. Did I mention the thorns?

We see you, mountain view!

We made a lot of progess this first day.

To reward us all for this hard work, I lightly seared and then mostly boiled steaks! Cast iron cooking on a tiny propane grill is a skill. A skill I do not have.

We missed the last stop to flavor town a few miles back. At least we have the fire extinguisher handy is case that steak boils over.

We will discuss more about my shower in the next post, because with all of this de-thorning, cutting, pushing and pulling, we were filthy. I will finish with this beautiful sunset walk, a reminder of why we fell in love with this area. A serene evening, just before we saw the bear.

Yes, I said bear.

Do you sometimes feel like we have lost touch with part of our humanity? Our modern life is so easy and we take so much for granted. I am not a luddite and I do believe that science and technology can create a better world for everyone but I sometimes wonder how much of our humanity we lose due to the technological world. How many “Bed Bath and Beyond” and “Applebees” do we need? For better or worse, the Covid-19 paradigm shift, hasn’t altered my social life much. We tend to be home bodies or forced family fun day trippers. We don’t dine out much, don’t engage in a lot of social activities but try to get outdoors and play or do yard work as much as possible.

My son is a teenager and with each passing day I am more aware of how short our time is as a family unit. Though we spend nearly all of our time together, I am always questioning if we are teaching him enough. During these last few months at home, I am trying to really get the point through to both of my children that the only constant is change and the ability to adapt to your situation is the most important thing to learn.

So back to the land, literally and figuratively. I am a real-estate junkie and follow all types of home and lands on the various websites, monitoring the sales and price changes. We spend a lot of time in the mountains, here in Virginia they aren’t as busy as in many places and hotels, cabins, campsites etc can be in short supply. I saw a large price drop on a 13 acre parcel of land bordering West Virginia, showed it to my husband. He also thought it sounded like a good deal and called the agent. The agent said they were considering an offer at the moment but were waiting to hear back on a counter-offer. I asked if we could also put in an offer, he said sure could and my crazy husband and son took off on a Sunday afternoon for a 3 hour drive to see the lot.

I think it was a good bonding experience for the two “men” to go and look at the land, it was a rough parcel with no clearing. They had to cut their way through and by standing on a stump, a mountain view could be seen in the distance. Though it wasn’t an area we have done much exploring in, it was within an hour of many hiking/biking/kayaking places we wanted to be near, the price couldn’t be beat and with Corona-Tine still in effect for most summer activities, it would be something to do as a family.