South Camp construction has begun! It started July 31st, and continues.

This is a composite photo of a panorama of our South Camp before construction.

Our South Camp will be much more elaborate (and cleaner) than Old Camp. Each of the tents, including the bathroom tent will be on a 12x12' deck. The 10x12 canopies (two of them) that we use for shade over the kitchen and in front of the tents will be on a 16x32' deck. We bought two more canopies to put over the tents to protect us from the rain.

It was really hard work constructing South Camp. To start off, our 4-wheel drive went out, and the access road to South Camp had not been pushed in. So we 2-wheeled it over the property, slipping and sliding, as the land is quite sloped there.

We worked a 9 1/2 hour day on Saturday, and almost as long on Sunday, with only limited breaks. We had to clear the land, raking all the dead grass out of the way. Some of the dead branches on the trees had to be trimmed, just so we wouldn't get hit in the face while we were working. It was 100 degrees during the day. But we were in heaven, building on our very own property.

(As always, click on the picture to get a larger picture that you can see better)

	The Blazer is loaded down with lumber we bought at home. See the numbers on the ends of the boards? Rob pre-cut and pre-drilled all the lumber so it would be like a kit once we got to 3Rivers.
		Frames for the 12x12 decks are ready. The first one took about an hour. We got pretty cocky, since we had allocated 2 hours. When we did the second one, we changed our building process, and this one took 1 1/2 hours! So, for the last one, we went back to the original method, and cut our time down to 45 minutes.
	YES! Success! After a lot of discussion, and several attempts at methods to get the frames up and balanced while we put the posts in and levelled the frame, we finally got them up on the basic 4 corners.
		We put the rest of the posts in the one frame just to test it out to see if it was sturdy enough. We walked on it and it was GREAT! Getting ready to cut the posts off, and Rob realized... we can't just cut the posts off because we need more long posts for the fronts of the other decks.... So... we have to take out some of the long posts in the back and replace them with cut-up posts. It was almost like building it all over again, but we didn't have to balance it.
	Lake Kaweah - down to just a river.
		Ravine Road, at the ravine. Notice how tall the bank is on the left side across the ravine. They mined decomposed granite from that bank
			Road entrance to our property. It now has decomposed granite on it (DG), dug from our property.

Links to other photo pages:

2006
Camp Repairs5    Grading the Road    Finish the Road    Clear Homesite Circle    Start Hydraulic Ripper Installation    Waterfalls & Rainbows    Chain Saw Loretta    Easter 2006   

2005
New ATV-New Year2005    Home Layout     Kyle Comes to Camp     Loretta Kills Road Weeds     Ryan Visits     Starting Counter Top     Finishing Cabinet     Easter 2005     Wesley's Spring Break     We meet the Architect     Finishing the Tree House     Our First Fire     Memorial Day 2005     Water Witching     Preparing the Well Site     Grading the Well Site     Digging the well     Our New Tractor     Labor Day 2005     Rusty comes to Camp     Smoothing the Road     Our own Water     Fire and Rain     Tractor Maintenance     Customize Tractor     New Backhoe     Thanksgiving 2005    Changing Oils     Solar Chargers & Toothbar    Rainy New Year Weekend   

2004
Three Rivers Home Page     Animal Friends     Then and Now     First Pictures     Rattlesnake Campout     Easter 2004     Building the Road     South Camp Construction     Building Decks     Finishing Decks     The Stair Master     Done at South Camp     Labor Day 2004     Leapin' Lizards     Tracking Bear and Deer     Securing the Camp     Our First Rain     Loretta's Family visits     Coco and the Boardwalk         Start the Treehouse     Frame the Treehouse