 Story
2024
Happy New Year. This
year has really gotten off to a busy beginning for sure. Within the first three
days of the new year, we went up to our mountain, to the beach, to a new park,
and ate a lot of new years food. Then on day 4 and 5, we went to the mountain
for what turned out to be overnight camping trip number 60 in the last two and a
half years. We finished up a temporary kitchen, to be used until the cabin is
built, and worked on the turnaround for the truck. And it was really cold at
night with the temperature dropping to around 7 degrees C (44 degrees F) with us
sleeping in buses with no warming stove or fireplace.
We are home now after completing overnight camping trip number 61, which was for
an incredible 8 days and 7 nights, our new record. The weather was incredible,
albeit pretty cold at night, with temperatures dipping into the forties. The
focus of this trip was our comfort. I added a wood frame roof over the buses and
installed a 5.8 x 7.8 meter tarp, which is really thick and even typhoon
resistant. This worked out really well, except for cutting out a lot of light,
requiring us to use lights even to eat breakfast. Our main eating table is
outside of the buses though, with the small eating table between the buses only
being used at night or when it rains. The cover also enabled us to use our
kerosene stove to warm us up. We are hoping to begin construction on our cabin
this year.
With our new roof (see above post) over the buses, and us much more comfortable
now, it was time to make things more convenient for Akiko. This meant a
functioning kitchen. I used a bunch of old wood from other projects for the wood
frame over the buses, and used everything else to build small but useful kitchen
shelves and a work area. The BBQ is set up next to the kitchen. A bit more time
was also spent on the truck turnaround. We also worked together to weed the farm
and prepare for bringing banana trees up to the mountain. |
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