We can’t get on our property, so we will probably stay at an RV park in the valley over the winter.
Since we don’t have a well on the property, we now have to get water from a neighbor, haul it in a big cooler and a jug up to where we are, then slowly pour it through a funnel into our trailer’s water tank. The process takes about 20 minutes or more and we usually spill some amount of water on us. And it has to be done nearly every day. This is not going to be fun when it’s 10 degrees and snowing outside. And we have to run a generator to charge our batteries for electricity. At the RV park we will have water and electric hookups. A little bit of civilization might be OK considering we are not familiar with or prepared for SNOW. And several people have said this could be a really snowy winter. The valley will have much less snow than here in the mountains and we will have an easier time there. And we will have Wi-Fi internet access. Right now we visit the neighbors every other day or so, sit in their driveway and use their Wi-Fi access to download email.
The neighbors have been great! Lynn and Linda first stopped us when we were looking at land and asked if they could help us. The one of the lots we looked at (and the one we ended up buying) is right next door. They have 12 acres, I think, and we have 7 acres, so “right next door” isn’t as close as it sounds. They have helped us out by loaning us tools, letting us get water from them, and they’ve been introducing us to several of the other neighbors that live up here. They’ve had us over for dinner twice and over for brunch once, meeting more people from the area. We even made dinner for them once, but we had it at their house, since our place is a bit small. Everyone we’ve met has been really nice. We’ve really found a community!
We will be taking the winter to work on our building plans. Of course, we’ve changed things on the plans, argue.. er “discuss” changes constantly. We may never get a plan finalized! We talked to our excavator today about the lay of the land where we will be building and we’ve changed our plans again. Probably for the better.