Somehow I managed - without asking for it - to get a day off. I can't adequately convey how incredibly worn out I am right now. I woke up early this morning but I have done nothing but had a few cups of coffee, pet the doggy and nothing else. There is no way, at least not feeling like - lethargic, groggy - this that Im going out and marking trees today. Perhaps I'll feel more energized this afternoon? No clue, not going to stress over it if I don't get over there.
Because the price of everything is off the charts right now, the idea of having a bath house built is likely going to go out the window. At least, not the way I intended to do it. It's just going to cost far too much money and that is nothing I want to get involved with right now. I am, after giving it some thought, going to likely buy a larger office building than what I was going to. You know, those portable "shell" buildings that you buy and then you have to do the interiors?
I did check on shower trailers, the prices are absurd. 50, 60, 70k? No thanks. I can get a larger office building for around 15k and spend around 10k putting in everything needed to have an office and 2 shower rooms. And renting them is like a grand a month. There are a couple of places in town that sell the portable buildings - and they have a large selection. So I will be checking them out and looking at pricing.
Inflation? Yes. An RV park expert who owns hundreds of them around the country was discussing the subject in a podcast. He pointed out that costs for everything are likely to go up for at least another year, possibly much longer, and that if you had any upgrades or major purchases you needed to do for your park, you are best off doing them right now. Don't wait even a few months. Economists have had the same, gloomy outlook. And now Rand Paul put out his version of a report that blames the government spending spree for Covid relief as the main culprit for 7% year over year inflation, which the story labeled as a 40 year high.
As far as the cost of everything, right now is absolutely the worst time to be thinking about building anything. An RV park is filled with costs for this, that and the other thing when contemplating building one from scratch. The only real way to save any money is to do as much of the work as you can yourself. I don't have carpentry skills and putting up a building is a bit beyond my skill level. Interestingly, if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't need any kind of permits from the county. They don't care and they make no bones about telling everyone. If you live in the county, outside of any municipality city limits? You pretty much have free reign to do whatever excepting what the state imposes.
I was thinking about trying to find a competent handyman, but the last time I tried doing that they all wanted very high hourly wages or they wanted to give bids, which turned out to be very high and untenable. I moved on quickly from that landscape. It's true that I am in a limited market for anyone with skills, this is a rural area and it's not densely populated. Therefore, whatever the price of a service is? You are stuck with it. You can try to get everyone in the area to give a price/bid, in the end, you'll have to deal with one of them for it isn't going to be cheaper to try to drag someone from 100 plus miles away.
So I will just continue to look at what options I have. I could go without a bath house, I suppose, but there is so much information that details the necessity of having one if you don't want to isolate a large portion of potential customers that might otherwise come. It's at the top of the list of priorities many RV'ers have when considering a campground.
It's getting a bit dismaying to see the costs of everything going up so high that the money I will have in a few days would have built this version of a park and then some plus money left over, but now I am looking at spending most all of it just for a 14 space operation. I was quoted 28k just for gravel yesterday. Yes, that includes delivery, but 28 thousand dollars for gravel? Did the earth run out of raw materials or something? I can tell ya right now I am not going to spend that much money on gravel, I will find cheaper material somewhere else or I will do something different. I don't know what, but rocks simply aren't worth that much money.
Anyway, I think I will just go right back to bed and take a nap. Why not?
