Upon arriving in Colorado, Teresa and I simply crashed and rested for two days.
But we had work to do, so we couldn't rest very long! Our first order of business
was to figure out how we were going to get a driveway into our property. We
also started look into purchasing a travel trailer. We plan to live in the
trailer through the winter and start building in the spring, allowing plenty of
time for planning and design. In addition, I hope to start working in January
to help ease any construction budgets, while Teresa concentrates on the planning
and design.
We arranged to meet up with Pat Smith of Smith Excavating. Pat came highly
recommended to us by a neighbor, and had done lots of work in our neighborhood,
Spruce Basin. We did the three hour trek from Edwards and talked things over
with Pat. Turns out we have to apply for a driveway permit with the Fremont
County DOT, since our driveway could affect DOT operations on our road. Once
approved, our address application should get processed and finally, we'll have a
proper address. Of course, there is no USPS
mail delivery, but I suppose it will help UPS/FedEx find us. (We have to pick
up our mail at the Cotopaxi Post Office about 15 minutes down the road.)
While near the property, we snapped this photo:
About a mile walk from our property, you have outstanding views of the Sangres,
including the 13,105 ft Bushnell Peak. The peaks are more beautiful when snowcapped
of course:
Turns out Pat cannot begin on our driveway for about three
weeks, but he said we could park a trailer on his lot across the street from ours. So Teresa and I started hunting. Our hunt started in some RV lots in Cañon City and Salida, but most were out of
our price range. We didn't want to spend over $3000. Once we returned to Edwards, we started hunting on the internet and had a good bit of luck on
craigslist. We drove into Denver last Thursday and saw the two campers
that looked most interesting. The first one was interesting as a prior owner had
installed a wood stove, which, according to the current owner, drastically cut down
on winter heating costs. Unfortunately, this trailer wasn't in great shape, and we moved on. Our next stop was a "4 season insulated"
1972 26' Holiday Rambler travel trailer. This thing was in pretty amazing shape, considering
the age. The only thing it will need is new tires. We liked it so much,
we put a deposit down on it. Here are some photos:
While inspecting it on Friday, I discovered a problem. For some reason, the battery isn't
powering up a few circuits. Oddly enough, the 12v circuits in question power
up just fine when it is plugged in and the converter is running. I don't understand
exactly how it is wired, but that sure seems really weird. We are going to
have that looked at on Monday evening. We also have an appointment
on Monday to get our truck outfitted with the proper connectors and brake controller.
We also have some more tests we need to run
to make sure everything is hunky dory before we pay in full. Hopefully, if
we find no other problems, we'll have it out on our property on Tuesday, leaving
plenty of time to meet my parents in Edwards on Wednesday.
While searching for information on the internet, I found these circa 1972 ads.
We can buy these as posters if we so desire!
That's it for now. Stay tuned to find out how things turn out...