Friday, May 20, 2022

 Every time something is completed, a new set of problems arises that have to be dealt with.  

In this case, maintaining the pathways that cost me short of 2k to complete. I'm not complaining about the amount of money spent, it was actually a bargain deal compared to other quotes and others advertising as high as $3,700 per day. At that rate, it would have cost me $7,400 to complete that job, which in my view, would have been outrageous.  

I'm going to have him out again.  Next time, it will be to try and have a road built to 2 of the campgrounds and a parking area near them for the other 2 campgrounds.  I will probably provide some sort of wagon at the parking area for people to transport their equipment from car/truck to destination.  

Considering at least throwing some grass seed along the trails. It may very well be that the resulting grass will only be able to survive on the sides of the trails, but that would cut down on the amount of vegetation trying to grow back.  Of course, another thought is to put down fabric they sell to restrict vegetation and cover the trails with rock - but that would be very expensive and not in the offing right now.  

Even grass seed is expensive.  Just going to do some research and see what the best cost-benefit solution is.  Interestingly, the Forest service recommends using some sort of gravel - yet I have been on many forest service trails in my youth and adulthood and have seen little in the way of gravel.  Maybe small amounts on some of them but mostly it's dirt with grass or some sort of vegetation on the side of the trail.  

No point in bugging the shop about the ATV, I'm leaving in 3 hours to go to the plant, load and drive clear over to West Virginia and likely won't be back until sometime on Monday.  Just because of the late load time, this really isn't a load they should be setting an appointment time at noon, it means I leave the plant no earlier than 2, meaning I have to drive until 1 am to get anywhere.  I bring up the ATV for at first, until I do something, it's going to have to be the method of keeping vegetation down.  

Yes, I am going to drive through the property today before going to work.  Gives me something to think about while driving.  I figure already that I will need to rent a mini-excavator to dig up the roots and portions of trees that the mulcher couldn't get out.  He tried, I watched him. The machine does what it does, wonderfully, but I knew there were going to be stumps that he just wouldn't be able to get out of the ground.  I mini excavator will dig those up quickly and now that I think of it, will remove all the vegetation and trees as the creek edge that he couldn't get to.  The creek is at least 2-1/2 feet deep, obviously he can't just run his machine over it and I wouldn't have wanted him to.  

Yeah I don't know how much it costs to rent one, but I'm guessing in the $600 - $800 range for a day's use.  Meaning I will need to mark everything out before hand that I need to get done so I can just start the operation without having to search all over the place for the stumps and such.  Meaning - a lot more orange marking paint.  There is a place that rents them locally and I hope will deliver it, it's too heavy for my trailer.  I just need to "beg" for a day off soon - well - I want to mark everything first and then ask for a day off.  Just need to have some time to walk through there and mull over everything.  Yesterday, I was walking at a brisk pace through all of it, just to see what had been accomplished.  

I could use a mini to also level out the campgrounds as well. And there is a hump at one of the trail heads that needs to be leveled out. As I said, I'm going to need time to walk through there and inspect all of it. There's a couple of places that will need a bridge, the creek at the back being the main one but also at the entrance to the trail, about 100 feet in, there is a small creek that will get your shoes nicely muddied if you don't look to step over it.  I personally don't need a bridge there, I just jump over, but for "normal" people who don't want to fool with that, they'll want a bridge.  As I said yesterday, those bridges are pre-built and relatively cheap.  

Now is definitely the time to start developing the trail while the rest of the RV project is slowly working it's way through all the processes/phases to get it done. It will take a while to get the trail to the point where I think it's ready for random people to be walking through it.  Limiting the amount of risks back there is key to keeping liability down.  I imagine an insurance company is going to want to see what kinds of protections I have taken to limit the risks of injury.

One thing for certain is there are several large, dead, rotting trees that I need to cut down back there.  We get lots of thunderstorms coming through this region and lightning strikes have killed off several trees back there.  There is one, giant, beautiful tree in the very back of the property, it is absolutely huge.  You don't see a truck that fat every day.  The limbs growing off that truck are like giant trees themselves.  I'll have to take some pics, tho I did post a video with a view of it.  I want to take a tape measure back there out of sheer curiosity to see how many feet around the trunk is.  Anyway, a few of those rotting trees could fall right over the top of the trail and of course, we can't have that.  

However, the next thing that takes precedence is marking out the RV lots.  They may be out there today digging out that hole, but there is nothing further that can be done until I do the next step.  I could have done it today, but I'm going to be driving almost 11 hours well into the night and I need to reserve my energies and alertness for the drive today.  I don't necessarily trust the contractor to lay it out the way I want it to be laid out.  I'm hoping after I get the first round of lots marked out that there will be room for a third line of them on the west side.  

This property line issue will come back to annoy me down the road. Losing 20 feet of land doesn't sound like much until you get to the point where you - need that land.  However, if I could get enough spaces in, I could simply build lots parallel to the 3rd driveway.  It's nothing I have to address now - but it likely that in the future, a court case will have to take place to determine who is right and who is wrong about the property line. The fence is the property line on one hand, a marker jutting out is the property line on another.  Actually, it's 14 feet in the front widening to 20 feet in the rear.  

I may, at some point, but enough string to run the full length of it and get a straight line from one marker to the other and see what I actually have.  

Now that I have refilled my mind with all of this stuff, I am leaving early for work to spend some time over there. No real physical exertion, I just like to see it and dream/imagine what it could become. And work out problems in my mind and looking up stuff to see what potential answers are on the internet to deal with them.

G'day.  

 Friday late-morning Typical morning when there is no work.  It was, I should say, until the new guy called.  "There's nothing wron...