I’ve updated the image gallery. So far there are three sections which include the current photos from the factory (updated), excavation and demolition (blasting with dynamite!).
This image is the first blast of dynamite for our foundation…
Thus far we now have a 350 foot driveway and a in which to pour lots of money.
I finally figured out what ORVs were long after I’d past this sign while riding my ATV with a neighbor.
What in the world could these ORVs be and if they’re stampeding, am I in any danger? I knew that the ATV I was driving was probably an ORV but it took me a while to realize it meant “Off Road Vehicle”. Thankfully, I didn’t see any stampedes but the ORV I was on was pretty wild. What’s more, my ATV isn’t exactly an ORV because here in Idaho, you can license them for the street. Now I can ride it to the store or up mountain logging roads without getting into trouble.
Here’s a shot of the beast. Unlike Gritz, my ATV hadn’t earned a name yet but Beast is pretty close.
Here is the beast atop a large sand dune. It may look like a forest in the back ground but under that woodsy exterior is an ancient desert.
4/20/07 – Jenny and I headed down to the factory which lies about 15 miles from our future home site.
It was exciting to see the blue prints which we’ve been drawing, correcting, and dreaming about come to life. Here is a series of photos showing what we saw and where the construction is at.
This is a view from the dining room window of our current rental house. The mountain you see is called Huckleberry Mountain. Our future home, about 15 miles away, will be just to the right of that mountain.
Jenny and I took a little picnic on our property today (4/7/07). Jenny in her hiking boots and the rustic setting made this a perfect candidate for a sepia tone image.
Electricity is a luxury that works most of the time. In the thunder and lightning storms of the midwest, where we’re from, outages were rare. An outage lasting more than two hours caused people to consider hoarding resources for survival. Here, an outage is just an outage, and when the electricity will come back on is anybody’s guess. Folks who grew up in rural America seem to think electricity is a bit overrated anyway. Last winter the electricity was out in Cocolalla for 3-4 days in some areas. It barely made the newspaper. Chicago would have the National Guard patrolling streets by Day Two.
If you need to have electricity for, say, running your business out of your home or running your well pump, and if you have electric heat for your house, you might have a different opinion of this resource. Thus a secondary power supply such as a generator is not uncommon. To that end, we’ve just purchased the first piece of our new house: a 16Kw generator that will enable us to keep things going during an outage.
I forgot to mention the other luxury – natural gas. When you live far from nowhere, getting natural gas piped directly into your house is uncommon, so folks get propane tanks delivered. Rather than having to play with gasoline tanks to fuel our generator, this one will be fueled by propane from a tank in the back yard. If all goes well, when the electricity goes out, the generator will kick in and can run for quite some time.
This sign says it all!
What could this be? A “DEADLY PLANT” and how could it be here killing everything in its path? This sign graces the local beach, warning everyone of the dangers of the monster called “milfoil”. I grew up in Illinois catching frogs in nearby ponds where milfoil was just part of the fauna. Here, the same plant appears to have taken on an almost mythical status. There are committees, Army Corps of Engineers, “experts” all working together to rid our waterways of this monster – basically a very invasive plant that takes over and pushes out native plants. Not to worry; it’s harmless to people.
Now, if you’re interested in getting rich, create a face cream, cereal, or an addictive drug using milfoil and North Idaho will pay you to take this plant off their hands. In the meantime, they’re probably spending a pretty penny on signs like this.
OK, here it is. Major industry belching out smoke 24/7 just three blocks from our (rental) house.
Actually, what you’re looking at is not what it appears. Sure, it’s a factory but it’s not belching out smoke. That’s steam. And if you like the smell of fresh-cut lumber, you’d like to have this factory near your home, too. This is the Lignetics plant of Sandpoint, Idaho (http://www.lignetics.com/lignetics/). It’s making wood pellets. In the process, we enjoy this industrial sized air-freshener as it makes the neighborhood smell like fresh cut pine.
It’s also close to our hearts because we plan on having a wood-burning pellet stove in our living room. Until we moved here, we’d never heard of such a beast. But here, many folks have them. They’re wood-burning heaters that stand alone or insert into fireplaces. We’re going to have one in our fireplace. They’re extremely efficient, automated (they feed themselves wood pellets), low cost and very low maintenance.
I have enjoyed driving out and finding an old logger road and taking it up into the hills to see what’s there. This past Saturday I found this critter just sitting down in the woods. Try as I might to get a good clear shot, he wouldn’t cooperate. Click the image to get a larger view.
Maybe this will become a whole new category of comments. Here’s an example of why we moved here. While walking in a local park, we found these two kids playing basketball. Compare the backdrop to where we grew up, and we can’t help but appreciate the area.
For months Jenny and I have been looking up at the hill where our home will be built, looking for the exact location of our land. When it’s covered in snow, it all seems to look the same. Finally, I found it. This is a shot from across the valley. We’re about 3,600 feet from the waterfront and a few hundred feet up.
The library that comes to you! You know you’re in a small town when…
While getting gas at the local (only) Cocolalla gas station, I caught a shot of the “BookMobile”. Our county sends out the BookMobile to get books to the communities that don’t have library. They don’t yet know that Jenny’s collection of books would rival a library, or they’d be sending people to our house.
