Mikal-Heine-Kautz State Park

This week our home has felt more like a State Park than a homestead... The campground began to take shape when Mark, Judy & Miles arrived and set up their new family tent for the holiday weekend! It had only been three weeks since I'd seen them, but it felt like Miles had added months worth of new accomplishments and personality developments. Penny was super happy to have her best friend here, and she woke up each morning with an excited "DEE!!" when she heard his little (or not so little) cry from across the yard. She happily shared her tub with him and they made it through the hottest weekend yet with temperatures in the high 90's the whole time. Yikes.

My parents made the epic journey towing thier camper from Chicago to California and arrived on the 4th of July. If two tents and camper weren't enough to make it feel like a KOA, there was the nightly sound of Aerosmith and Springstein echoing up the valley each night as our neighbors celebrated Independence Day. All we were missing was the shower house and pit toilets....and those would have been welcomed luxuries. I know that we have chosen a challenging lifestyle, but I'm really impressed by our families' abilities to put up with all our discomforts. It has been crazy hot... and we have no shower and no airconditioning. The guys have been out working hard to build our electrical service and dig the 4 foot deep trench to the utilities. Mark spent two days digging and pouring concrete with Scott, my dad and Scott have spent the week picking and shoveling a chest deep trench in hard-pan red clay... long hard hours of work. And mind you, baby-care in 90 degree heat is no easy task either. My mom has been entertaining Penny while I'm at work, making trips to McDonald's or the hardware store, just to find some relief in the air conditioning. Daily walks down to our cold local creek have been refreshing and downright crucial.

But this one week full of extra hands and help has brought us to a major milestone. Our first permanent structure... The next step is to have the county inspector check it out. If we pass inspection, then we can fill in the trench and have the electric company come out to pull the wire. It there will still be one more inspection after that, too, so actual power is still a way off, but hey...it looks a lot like progress!

Here we are surveying our accomplishments thus far...notice the two meter sockets on our elelctric panel. There will be copious amounts of available electricity, but the idea is that eventually one of those meters will spin backwards!