We were Bombed!

It snowed, a very wet and heavy snow last night. That lasted for a couple hours, which resulted in a thick dusting on the ground. Soon after that the snow bombs started. The snow falling from the trees lasted all night and into the morning. Hard to fall asleep but easy once your there.

Where is spring? It almost April. My son picked his first flower he found by the tent two days ago.

Oh yeah, we also have a large owls nest right behind us. She hoots all night long. We are just surrounded with life, I love it.

You Know You have Earned that Warm Cup of Coffee,

When you have cut down two trees, cut one up and split and piled it up undercover from the rain.

That is what Mac and I spent about 3 hrs of this afternoon doing. We harvested two died standing trees. One has some rot and the other is almost perfect, both are dry.

All this was done is Western Washington's famous down pour of a rain. Really feels good getting dry and sipping that coffee.

Photo Update of What We See Everyday

These are the birds that we hear all day long. They're not as bad as the fighter jets that fly over. C-17

Fighter Jet. Now those suckers are loud!

These deer will let you almost walk up to them. They were born hear on the base. Their home is among the fences of McChord.

If you look in the bottom right hand corner you will see our tent lines.

Mac got it going

Mac got the generator running great. He had to take the carburetor apart and clean it out and replace the spark plug. Running nice and quiet now. Nice to have the power back. We are going to get a battery bank set up next month. We had one in 2006 that worked great. Our generator charged two deep cycle batteries using a battery charger. Hooked to the batteries was a inverter that we plugged our light and computer up to. Only difference is we will be using gel deep cycle batteries.

We want to also invest in a solar panel. That would be great.

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.