Happy Holidays!

Well, Christmas 2005 is nearly upon us and I want to wish everyone the merriest one possible! I made my own Christmas cards this year for the very first time. I like the way they came out so well, that I will doubtless do it that way from now on. I used the camp as my inspiration and just to show that one man's ugly is another's beauty, I featured the big red spruce on the corner of the main campsite clearing. Dad and Rob (among others) gave me quite the hard time about wanting to keep my "ugly" old pine tree, but I saw much more to it. What do you think?
I apologize that the posts here have been kind of sparse, but that became a necessity once I realized that while Dad and I (or someone and I) have been up to camp many times in the past 2 years (2 years! can you believe it???), and while we have always tried to do some improvement on the place each time, quite often very little changed from one visit to the next. if fact, it's not until you look back at the early pictures, that you can get the sense of all of the changes that have occured. That shows the gradularity of the work we have done thus far.

However, that is about to change in a very dramatic way. In the past month or so (Around Thansgiving) we purchased a 5' x 10', 2000 lb capacity flatbed trailer with a ramp gate (for ATVs) . With this we bought and hauled all of the green-treated lumber we will need to build the base of our first cabin. Also, over the Summer, my neighbor across the street purchased new windows for her house and gave us (no charge) a combination Picture window with sliding side-lites and a regular casement style window. Furthermore, Dad purchased a pretty decent air compressor, and I bought a 3500 watt gas-powered generator and a 6-way extendable air hammer gun. All of these materials and tools have been taken up north. We have also chosen the site for the first cabin (pretty much right about where the tarp and tent sit in the previous post--except a little further into the corner).

I have to pick up a few more things such as blocks and flooring/decking and we can begin building the base. Once it is up we can take our time and put up the walls and roof. I still have about $2000 remaining for this last bit of material, but it should be plenty enough. We already have a kerosene heater so once the cabin is up we can begin using the property as we like. The road and the well will be our next projects, and then probably another cabin. I also want to cut and clear some trails in the woods to make movement more easily managed. But these are all future projects. First, the cabin.

This will likely be the last 2005 post so I want to wish everyone a warm and happy holiday season. See you next year!