This is not my driveway. Mine is worse. I’m looking out the driveway of my friends place where I’m staying while they help me get my place started. And it’s a mudhole. When driving out with a pickup you have to have enough speed to not bog down. When going out in their Prius you have to know where to put the wheels to miss the deepest ruts. If the water wasn’t there it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s been raining. And raining. And raining some more.

It has been raining every day since Friday. Saturday was lovely until the later evening when it poured down and it hasn’t stopped since. I’ve been told that this is a bit unusual. Not that they don’t get rain in June, but they don’t usually see so much for so many days in a row. Fairbanks is in the interior and most of the rain will drop going over the mountains by the coast. Comparing Anchorage to Fairbanks weather-wise is like comparing Portland to Bend. Marine air makes the weather warmer and wetter and Fairbanks doesn’t get any marine air.

Usually I don’t mind the rain, but at the moment there is an excavator sitting on my property that cannot be used because of how wet it is. It would cause more damage to my driveway than benefit. We rented it for a week and got 8 of our 40 hours of run time in before the rain shut us down. It’s due to go back today, but we had to go in and ask if we could hang on to it for a bit longer in the hopes that the rain will stop and the mud will dry out enough to get some of those hours used up. We now have until Friday morning. The rain might let up on Wednesday afternoon. Fingers crossed, right?

In the time we did put in on the machine this is what got done. The pad at the end of the driveway got smoothed and leveled. The place we want to build is leveled and the second site is also leveled and compacted with an access road down that a 2WD truck managed to navigate down and back up.

Then the pile of trees that came down from the area of my property that was cleared for driveway and build site got trimmed, measured, and stacked. By the start of next month my friend should be able to bring his sawmill over and we can get some lumber from that pile. I was pricing lumber that we need to build and while this might be more complicated than just going to Home Depot it’s also going to save me a lot of money. Lumber is expensive! Especially when you need to plan for enough insulation to get through winter at -°30 or colder. I want to be cozy when it’s ugly outside.

While Lance was using the excavator I had a project of my own. Being off grid means no running water or flush toilets. I plan to put in septic at some point, but until then I need an outhouse. This is a design he’s wanted to make for a while now for his family, but I’m lucky enough to get the trial run on it. It’s a little cabin of its own with a 300 gallon tank in it. The idea is to insulate it well with the scraps of closed-cell foam he’s collected, then run a small heater under the floor to keep the waste from completely freezing and building up stalagmites in winter. Trust me when I say I don’t want to deal with those stalagmites.

I made more progress on the outhouse than is shown in the photo above. There are stairs and a floor. I also got roof beams in, but by the time I was done with them it was late on Thursday evening and I was tripping over air. I didn’t think combining tools and ladders with physical exhaustion was a good idea so we called it. And the rain began as we drove home. All that is left on the outhouse project is a roof, install the door, and add a seat and vent. It shouldn’t take long once I can get back up there.

So that’s where we stand for now. Waiting for the rain to stop. Waiting for other things to come together so we can move forward. Finding other productive things to do while we wait. I still believe I’ll have a roof up by August. At least I hope I will. But I also need to start looking for work. I have savings but I need an income too, sooner than later. My 14 days is almost up. I’m obviously not sick with the virus. I can get out there. I’ll keep you posted.