Well, first off, here’s a little fella who I look forward to seeing real soon….

Todays trip was one of the more interesting ones. Hauling a 500 gallon Roth Multitank up there for future use. Managed to fit it into the back of my itty bitty pickup truck (although I had to turn the tank on its side) and get up there with no problem. However, it was a rather awkward and heavy object to get out of the back fo the truck by hand. Figured I’d just give it a shove and let gravity do the work. Smarter, not harder, yknow? Well, I lost control of it and it rolled off the back of the truck and right over my AK…

Managed to squash the corner of the magazine floorplate and ruin the mag. Here’s the kicker – I only brought one mag for the AK. I figure if I haven’t solved the problem with thirty rounds of steel core another mags worth aint gonna change things to a noticeable degree. So, there I am, in the middle of Beartopia, with a single shot AK. Bad survivalist!

So, what to do? Why, break out the ’emergency rifle’, of course. Reached behind the seat of the truck, opened the gun case, and pulled out the Green Meanie:

That one has eight spare mags with it, by the by. So…moral of the story…spare mag even if you think you wont need the extra ammo because you may just need the mag itself. And, as they say, unless you’re swimming or on fire you can’t have too much ammo.

So, rolled the Roth off the truck and looked like the Presidents escape pod from Escape From New York. (Note that the iamges show it laying on its side. That lid is the top of the thing.)

Size? Uhm… let’s see….

Height: 51″
Width: 62″
Length: 60″

The 750 gallon, which will be up there in two weeks, is same dimensions but 103″ long, which means it’ll hang out the back of my truck by a tad under three feet. Not too unworkable.

Still gotta get the equipment to bury these guys though. Here’s a cross section of what the terrain is like under the grass:

Lotsa shale-like rock. A guy at work wants to sell me this:

Needs a new starter switch assembly which can be had on Amazon for less than a hundred bucks. For a couple grand, it might be worth taking a chance on . It might not have enough cajones for larger projects but for small projects like trenching, post holes, etc, it might be worth it. However, If I wanna drop a good deal more coin he has a Case backhoe for sale….

Thatll do pretty much anything I want but its probably more than I need. To my way of thinking I only need it for a year or two until all my digging projects are done. Then it’s just money sitting idle. However, I am told that once you have a backhoe you discover a lot of uses you didnt know you needed. I imagine I could always sell it to the neighbors…there’s always that one guy living in the sticks that has his own road grade, bulldozer, or similar equipment.

Regardless, something has to happen and soon. In addition to needing to bury these guys, I need to get some holes deep in the ground for concrete piers for a little bare-bones cabin. Starting tomorrow the days get shorter and it’ll snow up there in probably another 10-12 weeks. Tempus fugit.

Well, finally got my survey back from the surveyors. No bill yet, but I do have the coords of the markers and a lovely .kml file I can open in Google Earth that gives me some good info. Was there anything in there that was eye opening? Mmmm…no. And thats a good thing, isn’t it? The last thing I want is surprises.

Mathematically, I am within about 99.9% of the advertised acreage…any difference could easily be written up as a rounding error.  Some features that I was curious about are now proven to definitely be on my side of the property line. The only possible kerfuffle is that the barbed wire fence that ostensibly is the border of state land is probably a couple feet on the inside of the state land side of the border. But Id rather it be a couple feet inside their side of things rather than the fence being a couple feet into my side of things.

Not sure yet what the final cost will be, but whatever it costs is whatever it costs. The result is whats important. I know now, with reasonable and legal certainty, precisely where my realm does and does not extend to. More importantly, I know where my neighbors should and should not be.

Brought the laptop this time. Connected to Starlink just fine. I brought it so I could more easily check some Google Earth stuff without the limitations of a phone. Normally, I’d throw in a lengthy post here but you’ll have to tune in later for an update. Got things to do, man…and daylights burning.

ETA:

And, apparently, a grizzly  black bear-of-color ate my game feeder. Thought it might be a griz but the snout is off, and the ass end is higher than the shoulders…

Time to bust out the old steel-core Norinco for the AK………

Well, there was much to do up at the Beta Site so lets start at the top….

StarLink seemed to work just fine up there. One nice thing was that it allowed text messaging to work up there, which was pretty cool. I ran it off a small lithium battery bank that I picked up at CostCo a while back. Setup was simple, signal was good, and speeds were quite good. All in all, it worked out just fine. I’ve got a Milwaukee Packout case that will have some foam cut to fit the Starlink and all its accessories. The StarLink Mini is quite the piece of gear to let me stay in touch with the rest of the world while being way the heck off the beaten path.

Of course, I wanted to check out the new property markers. I already knew where the old markers were and was curious to see where the newer. more modern, survery put the markers in relation to the old ones. Broadly speaking, there were all within a yard or two of the old ones. At least, 3/4 of them were. I found three of the new ones but when I went to check on the last one, only the old markers were there. No new flagging tape, no new cap, no new nuthin’. Im guessing they didnt finish the task that day and will be back this coming week. But…I went to all the markers and got GPS coords.

And, for better or worse, I had to spend some time posting signage:

It is what it is. I didnt spend all that money to not have privacy. And just to help me stay abreast of any unauthorized visitors while I’m ‘in residence’ I also have these:

IYKYK. I also have a wired set of these and a bunch of extra geophones which will be quite handy for other projects.

While wandering around the property looking for the new markers I wound up tromping through parts I had not been through yet. I mean, I still havent really wandered the entire width and breadth of the property. I kinda held off on doing that because I wasnt 110% sure where my property started and stopped. Well, different story now. While wandering I found a cool little meadow-like area that was literally surrounded by fallen dead trees and in the middle of this opening was a huge tree that was bent into a serpentine shape. It was like some sort of wooden Stonehenge. Had no idea it was there. I need to spend a weekend just meticulously walking a grid so I don’t miss all these details.

Also brought up the other 4×8 deck I built and bolted to the first one I brought up, so now theres and 8×8 platform up there for me to use when I’m up there and need a place off the ground for a tent or cooking.

All in all, a productive trip.

Ok, testing StarLink from the Beta Site.

Uploading this at 212p local time. I just need someone to comment and let me know what time they’re seeing this.

ETA: looks like it works. Well done, Elon!

Well, I do have to give them credit…they said theyd be there today and…they were there today.

Apparently two of the corners aren’t an issue but they’re having to work a bit on the remaining two. I’m hoping this is all wrapped up by Friday so I can go up there this weekend and look at my lovely new property borders.