Crazy Monkey Ranch

We went down to the ranch for the week (as we often do these days) and I actually decided to get off my keester for a bit and snap off a couple photographs.  We didn’t actually do much of anything while there, otherwise.

Trailer Under The Moon

Driveway and Badito By Moonlight

Yuccas Before The Wet Mountains By Moonlight

The Morning Snow

Ok, so it’s 8:30 at night now, and we have 2 1/2 walls up. I’ll show you the progress photos now, so you can see the platform we put up last night (with the light of the halogen lamps we bought at Home Depot), and the 2 walls we put up today, as reference.

The platform we built in the dark last night, by daylight

We went into Pueblo early this morning to get the second round of stuff — siding and lumber and hardware for the door. And pancakes and coffee. I almost forgot pancakes and coffee! They’re what got me through the morning’s work, namely, this:

2 walls complete and braced

We went back into Pueblo around 2:30 to get the last supplies that we needed — some more lumber, the rest of the siding, felt paper, and the shingles to cover the roof. When we got back, we put together the front wall — well, I mostly put together the front wall, Ben was cutting the lumber for the rafters and the 4th wall — and now Ben’s working on putting the straps on it and getting it ready for siding.

The Element isn’t a bad shelter. It’s better than the tent, definitely, as the wind doesn’t rustle the car’s body, or come up under the rainfly and into the tent. The seats lay relatively flat — flat enough to make a decent bed for 2 people. And you get the added bonus of watching the stars through the moon roof. With my head on the headrest of the back seat (laid flat), my legs come to the seat part of the front seat, which means we can stow things in the footwell and on the seat while sleeping. And we did.

I’ve hammered my fingers a couple of times, and gotten really frustrated with some nails, but Benny always comes to my rescue, either pulling out or hammering in the errant nail, and comforting me after I hit my thumb (really hard) by telling me “That’s the wrong kind of nail.” My right arm is getting a workout with all the hammering going on. I’ll be glad the next time we build something, as Ben’s promised that we’ll have a pneumatic nailer next time. But I have my hammer, and my nailbag, and I try not to complain too much (except for the bad words after I smash a finger with the hammer). I’m enjoying building this shed, although it’s hard work.

So today, we made holes and filled them in. We spent the morning digging post holes for the posts tying the shed to the ground, then went to Pueblo to buy lumber. We went to Foxworth Galbraith as well as Home Depot, and bought some lights as well as the tools we needed.

The site for the shed, with holes dug

We got back to the property around 3 pm, and started working in earnest. We worked until 8:30 or so, and we were pleased with the progress. We built the whole floor of the shed, from the posts, to the joists, to the floor.

Today’s chore has been to de-cactus and grade the driveway, so we’ll have an easier time of getting into and out of the property on our return visits. The dog has a new nickname, now. “Cactus Foot.” It’s also a “medical condition” because we keep asking her if she HAS cactus foot. She seems to be adapting, although she does look at us like we’re crazy for walking back and forth and back and forth all the time.

We have driven down to the ranch again today and plan to stay for almost a week.  Until Saturday or Sunday.  We took Nulla along with us, and it will be interesting to see how she deals with sleeping in a tent with lots of howling wind around.  We stopped by the lumber yard in Walsenburg and picked up some stakes and flagging so I can try to stake out where the driveway and easements go, and we went shopping for groceries at the Walsenburg Safeway.

We hadn’t been to the Safeway before and were fairly pleased.  It is small and old but it was clean and well stocked, it should be a good place to pick up standard groceries.  If we need larger quantities of anything we can always go to Pueblo or the Springs and buy in bulk.

This afternoon is windy as can be again, weather.com says around 22mph.  Hopefully the wind will dye down for the night, but we have weathered worse.  At least today is nice and warm.

Plus the internet is working nicely today.  We haven’t broken the modem yet (again), and we are getting 2 bars of highspeed access using the antenna.  So expect updates once a day or so.  I did forget to buy an inverter so battery life is aat a premium untill we go back into town to get one, which will probably be tomorrow or Friday.

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