Taking a Much Needed Break

Well after much thought on what direction to take our family, we have decided on a house. Sadly to get this house at a decent priced rent we had to leave the State to achieve that. In the Midwest homes are much cheaper, buying a home is a real possibility instead of a far fetched dream.

Our family has grown through it all. The tent was great while it lasted, but our children come first. Our 6 month old got a very bad stomach bug and we had to get running water to clean bedding, clothes and bath him.

It is not that we wouldn't do it again or could do it. As a family I think we passed a very hard test. Could you survive in a tent with minimal provisions from material things? - Yes!

Our family lasted in our tent from February 2009 to April 2009. Our family really did need a break from society. We are very proud of this. But we also have to come to terms with the fact that yes we were homeless. Our kids need a home.

Another thing we found out is that unless you are set up somewhere where water is easily gotten and wood is abundantly dry then a tent can be a money pit. My husband cut, split and hauled so much wood, that same amount of wood would have kept a house warm for at least a couple of months.

We are still very active in studying what is needed for long term family survival in a bug-out situation. The two main limiting factors that make tent camps hard to transport is (a) fuel in the winter for wood stoves (b) realistic fresh water supply.

One of the thing that we feel might make this better would be a muli-family camp. Where one vehicle can pull a fresh water trailer of 200-500 gallons or more. We believe that successful tent living as history has shown has been done in groups, like the Indians of North America, the Tribes of Asia and the early Celts.

Thanks for all the support. We will be now taking a break into the next adventure possibility the next summer. We will be trying new equipment and new ideas.

Spring is Here

Winter have finally retreated and let Spring move on in. The flowers are starting to bloom and the trees have small leaves now. The temperature is 41 degrees at night and 60-70 degrees in the day. Weather man says it's not supposed to last long but hey its a good sign.

Alaknak stood strong through our first windstorm

We pretty good wind yesterday, the trees around us were cracking and crap was hitting our tent. After our sons nap we decided to go to town for a while, and give the wind time to die down. When we got back the wind had stopped and it was a mess of little branches on the road and around the tent. But our tent was standing.

This tent has kept every type of weather off of us. Wouldn't necessarily trust this in deep winter. That is what the TEMPER tent will be for. We are really liking the design of the TEMPER tent. We can make it as large as we need, since they are put together in sections.

Today is a busy day. Hope to get the vestibules for the front of the Alaknak from Cabelas, and looking at getting a good jogging strollers. The jogging stroller has to be one that can go over rough terrain without bouncing the boys all over the place.

Mac is keeping his eye out for a couple old RV water tanks for our water storage. A water trailer would be ideal but not in the plans right now.

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.