Our End Goal

Many have asked what our goal is and I haven't even thought of posting it. Well our goal is quite simple. To live in our tent until we have enough saved up to put a good down payment on land. Then we will move our camp on to our land and keep saving. First thing that has to be done before we even consider the start of building the house is the well and septic.

We live in a time where it is just not wise to take out a 15 or 30 yr bank loan. After figuring at monthly expenses we figure we will be living in our tent for 2-5 years, but after that time we would own property and have a good sized house.

But in that time we will have the perfect camp figured out. Our goal is to make our tent a movable house, and we are partly there. But aside from all that we are out here to learn to love life. Learn to live off the land. Most importantly, learn to be a better husband/wife team. These are life skills that can become rusty over time if not used. Through it all our boys will be learning great skills and knowledge.

Just over all to escape the madness of funding someone else dream.

Photo update.

After a week of rain, sleet and snow we are dry inside, well except for the condensation.

Some things we do not like about the 12x20 is the huge air vents over the front and back doors. As you can see Mac duck taped them. The air flow was to great for the stove output.

Back door

Front doorClose up of the front door vent


Our set up is a 5 x 10 cargo trailer and tent. For transport our tent and all the living amenities go in the trailer. - We will be upgrading to a 6 x 12 trailer soon.


And it was a warm snowing morning. Well it was warm inside.

Mac and our son working on the generator.

All in all we are a happy family living in the woods loving life to its fullest. We no longer have the burden of the ever amounting junk that homes collect. I should really say houses, since we have a home here. See.

Looking in the front door.

You see our bed, boys crib and the kitchen

Fairing the cold weather

Western Wa has been hit with quite the winter. Coming over here we thought it was warming up or at least soon to warm up. Not so, Mother nature had other plans. For the last couple of weeks we have had snow, sleet, hail, rain (tons of rain) and sunny days. Nights have been cold. But inside our home we are nice and toasty.

It is really amazing how your tolerance for cold changes when you have been cold. Living in a house I felt like I was freezing at 73 degrees. Now 73 degrees is hot and 60 is warm. Funny how spoiled we can become. Having the bed off the ground really helps though since you are not laying at the coldest spot of the tent.

The inside is coming together. The "Kitchen" has a shelf for food, cook table with shelves and a table to do the dishes. To do dishes I heat water on the wood stove or propane stove, while that is heating I go get 4 gallons of water. One kettle of hot water warms 2 gallons of water. I split 4 gallons of water between two containers to have wash and rinse water. Works great.

For lighting we use one propane lantern for cooking, one incandescent light bulb powered by the generator for overall evening light, and two LED lanterns for the late evening when the boys are asleep. This seems to work great.

The boys sleep in a bolt together crib, I put them to sleep in our bed then once they are asleep move them to theirs. Never once has tucking your child in been so important. They don't even seem to notice that we are in a tent and not a house.

This is all coming together.

Snow

It started snowing last night and dusted the ground, we woke up this morning to about an inch. We were lucky to get in a half a cord of wood before the temp dropped. We've been in the low 30 for about 3 days now. We are making it though. We got our wood stowed in a Wal Mart tent that a couple gave us when they left (had some damage from their kittens). Works great to keep our wood dry.


Mac got the generator going. The gas line had air in the carburetor. He had to run it half open on the choke all day for the air to work its way out. The generator powers the DVD player, laptop and a light. Next month we are getting a couple deep cycle gel batteries that the generator will charge. Then our stuff will plug into the batteries instead of the generator. Not that our generator is loud, you can't hear it until you are close to our site. The batteries will cut the run time on the generator down to 2 hours a day instead of all day.

Fun at one of McChord's Air Museum

These are the birds we hear taking off daily from our campsite

Watching them take off

" Where did he go?!? He went Bye-Bye"


The C141 Starlifter - Mac took many Airborne jumps from one of these

Photos of our Adventure

Looking in the front door

Early Morning in McChord after a light snow dusting

View out one of our windows

Wood Pile

Doing Great

We got the bed off the ground and the kids is a crib. The weather is warming up so its not so bad when I wake up at night to stoke the fire.

This adventure is really coming together. Mac got the generator working. It needed an oil change. Mac had also figured out that the wire harness inside the generator vibrated loss when it was running so rough. Glad he got that going.

The Alaknak is working out rather well. Mac taped the top vents above the door. We uses the side vents daily to reduce condensation, which works.

We scored on a Coleman propanee stove, and to boot, it was on sale at Big 5. $100 stove for $69, not bad. We returned the one we had since our boy could turn on the gas. That and this one has a larger base so it can hold stock pots.

The boys just love the outdoors. Off to do laundry today.