At the Park – Days 96 – 102

Sept 25 – Oct 1

Mon – Wed evenings was all about work for work eating, and sleeping if memory serves.

Although I worked a bit late Thursday, I decided to get cleaned up and go to Douglas none-the-less.  I tried a new Mexican restaurant called “El Chef”.  Food was good.

Made my usual stops at the gas station, TSC, and Walmart.  This time I remembered to stop at the credit union to get some cash as well.  I was hoping to avoid the ATM fee being a CU to CU transaction.  No such luck.  On the way home I stopped into the tavern.  I stopped to checkout a bit of commotion outside by the front door.  It seems the some young adult gal stood in one place too long and a baby tarantula about the size of an old silver dollar climbed up onto her ankle (she was wearing sandals if I recall).  To her and her friends credit, she remained very calm while her friend carefully used a twig to remove the spider from her without injuring it.

I once again worked a bit late Friday so I was rushing to get my dish prepared in time for the potluck.  The potluck was nice.  There were a number of new guests that have recently arrived at the park that came to the potluck.  What looked like an incoming storm caused us to hurriedly scatter after the potluck was over rather than lingering longer to visit.  I planned on working for work to troubleshoot data loss for an application anyway.  It was a after midnight EST before we called it quits troubleshooting not really any closer to the root cause than when we started.

Saturday morning I took my time getting around to go to the property, I did a few chores around the trailer and started researching and revisiting my solar system plans.  Finally, I had to force myself to getup and get moving so as not to spend the entire day on the computer.  As I was getting ready to leave, I saw that Tim, Rusty’s husband, had just returned from a mail run to the post office so I stopped to check for my building permit.  Finally, it was here.  We now have our own address in Arizona and I can start working on building projects.  If I had money.  🙂  No status update on the sale of the house or the cleanup of the rental to put it on the market to sell.  That is okay.  I have enough savings left to put in a fence which I need to do first to keep the cattle out. so they don’t damage my building materials and solar panels when I start getting them delivered.  I may hold off until January to get my drivers license and change the vehicle plates to AZ when I can do all the vehicles at once and not be paying for both Michigan and AZ auto insurance policies.  On the way into the property, I had my mobile camera setup recording video of the drive up the dirt road to the laptop.  At the property I carried my 10′ folding ladder to the NE corner of the property.  Then I painted about a foot or so of the end of a 2x8x16′ with bright orange marking paint and carried it to the NE corner.  I then situated the board with the ladder so the ladder was holding the pained end of the board in the air.  I then hiked to the SE corner by the road and confirmed I could see it from there.  I also confirmed using a compass heading that it is due north.  I also reassessed where I would be putting the north fence line.  Instead of putting it on the north side of the shed, I am going to put it on the south edge of the clearing which is just south of the shed.  I will move the shed at some point so it will be within the fence line.  The result of that change is that the existing piled rock structures will be outside the fence line so people can still walk/ride up to them without entering our fenced area.  In the future I may chose to fence the more rugged northern half of the property and will deal with entry for visitors to look at the rock structures at that point.  I then dug out the drone and started flying it around the property to get the “before” video and photos I’ve been so anxious to get.  In the process, I clipped some dead branches at the top of a tree.  The drone seem to get stuck and it was out of sight but within earshot.  So I started hiking double time to find it before the battery ran out (it only has about 20 minutes of flight time and I had already been flying for 5-10 minutes).  I came to the road at the western boundary of the property and realized I had passed it and not realized it when I was flying the drone and I had flown the drone into the neighbors air space.  Crawling through a section of barb wire fence that had enough slack to let me get through without issue, I once again headed for the sound of the drone while also getting closer and closer to the neighbors house.  I finally got close and thought I heard it in the tree to the left so looked there.  Didn’t see it but it sounded like it was coming from the right at that point, so I looked right.  Didn’t see it.  Where the hell is it.  How about straight up about 100 feet or more.  It would seem that I had lost video and possibly control signal from the drone and hadn’t realized it.  I’m sure there was an indicator on the display that I simply didn’t notice.  Something I will have to check out instructional videos on.  I know I’ve seen it.  Anyway…  As predicted, just as I located it, the controller started beeping at me telling me to land ASAP due to low battery.  Naturally, I was around trees with no good place to land so once again I start hiking double time back toward the road between our properties  controlling the drone as I did so.  I found a clearing before reaching the road and safely landed the drone there.  I then carried it back to the truck replaced the battery, grabbed the third battery which still had a charge, and headed to the building site.  From there, I flew around a bit more getting some still photos of the land from various angles and took a bit more video.  Once all three batteries were drained, I packed up and headed back to the trailer with plans to return Sunday morning to start clearing a path along the eastern property line to start installing fencing.  At the trailer I started cooking food for Sasha and relaxed a bit before departing for another live music show at the Portal Cafe.  I rode with Rusty, Tim, Bob, and Betina (Betina being the designated driver for the evening).  Music was good and the bottles of Mikes Hard Lemonade kept coming and disappearing down my throat.  As the empties kept getting carried away and we were taking turns buying rounds, I completely lost track of how many I had, but I’m guessing I had about 3 too many.  It has been years since I have been that intoxicated.  I even got up to dance (by which point I was focused on not tipping over while trying to dance).  Needless to say, we all had a good time and thanks to Betina, we all made it home safely.  Taking Sasha to the dog run after getting back was another interesting test in putting one foot in front of the other (or near enough so as to move forward and not fall down).  I learned not too try to look straight up at the stars in that condition else risk falling over backwards.  Naturally Sasha wanted to walk the park after doing her business and I was like – ya whatever.

Needless to say, I was in no condition to go wield a chainsaw to clear brush this morning.  so I have spent the day sleeping and working on getting a laptop setup with suitable software to edit the video I took Saturday.  Sad to say, I had many obstacles and did not manage to complete that task.  The best I can offer tonight is one video that I can share without editing and a number of still photos.  In addition to the previously mentioned video’s my outdoor camera at the trailer caught some wild life but again, I want to edit that one before sharing so you are going to have to wait for it.

So, without further ado, here are some photos.

The experimental video taken from the drone can be found here in the morning when I publish it.  It is in the process of uploading which at this rate (with my slow internet upload speeds) will hopefully be before I wake up to work in the morning.

Night all!