I have been getting the urge lately to go on another adventure out into the woods. Last year about mid-May my friend and I decided to go on a canoe trip and try our luck hunting hogs deep in the county forest. Trip lasted about 3 days. It was evident on the first day that we forgot a few important things. No TP, no utensils, no plates, and no cooking pots. Using our skills we made plates out of slabs of wood, used the iron skillet for all cooking, and made utensils out of wood using our awesome knives (well my friend's knife was awesome at least, mine was 50 cents at a garage sale). The TP part of the equation also was solved with some "creative substitutive foraging". We managed to build a very poorly made wigwam. This year I found out we were camping on someone's land, not county forest land so I'll have to be a little more careful this time. I took a bunch of pictures but then later lost the camera on a later excursion out to the woods on my motorcycle.

This year I would like to go again for a little longer and preferably not on private land. And I'll be sure to bring plates and utensils along with a few other missed things. I am not sure where or if I will use the canoe again. A few things around the house are going to have to be taken care of. First and foremost the roof. It has become a very drawn out project. While the other side has been done for over two months I have languished in laziness and fits of ADD sidetrack projects while my roof has been wanting of some TLC. Well I buckled down and hopefully it'll be done this week so I can take care of some other much needed repairs on the house. The pumpkin patch failed, mostly due to my inexperience at plowing fields. Learning experience, alas I'll always have next year. Also my garden plans failed to grow into anything more than a figment of my imagination.

My trouble is too many projects to distract me on and from hence forth each project will not be started until another one has finished. Another thing is that I need to really get used to having a neighbor across the street. The other place was definitely more private and that is something I do miss having. Perhaps it is my lack of focus but already I have thought about what I would look for in a new place.

More trees and more privacy are on the top of that list. The place I have now should make a handsome profit when I go to sell out. I love the scenery of Northern Wisconsin but the high property taxes of this state are making me look elsewhere. Alaska would be awesome but the price of land is relatively high and after much thought on this the increased price of goods versus the lower 48 almost eliminates the advantage of no property taxes in the unorganized Boroughs. If I could find a few people willing to buy with me the cost of the land would be relatively low. The idea of having a few hardy like-minded neighbors strikes me as the best combination of combating both the lack of social interactions one would have while living in the bush along with being able to get things done a bit faster. Thus far I still haven't completely crossed it off my list so maybe an adventure up to the Last Frontier is in order just to get that Alaskan fever out of me. Perhaps I won't like it at all but no way of telling unless I at least visit it.

Has it really been over a month since my last entry? At any rate things around here aren't moving quite as fast as I would like them. The calender keeps advancing meanwhile my various projects have been at a standstill. It has been rather rainy lately so I only got one side of the roof done. I did get some stuff picked up and picked out quite a bit of steel out of one of the many garbage pits around here. I also wasted a day and a half trying to build a temporary garage out of pallets. I now decided that the easiest way to do it is to use the many numerous telephone poles around the property and make a pole shed. I have been trying to get a good friend of mine to come up and visit for a while. Thus far he hasn't been able to move out of his parent's place. I could use some extra help especially when it comes time to tear down the old mobile home and the addition on the house. Also my poor pumpkin patch is looking rather unpumpkiney. I got stuck trying to plow it and now I have been waiting about two weeks for my generator to be rebuilt. I think I am going to go up to the neighbor's farm and see if he wouldn't mind plowing up a couple acres. Also I started rewritting a story I had wrote when I was ten. It was a hundred pages worth of run on sentances, bad grammer, and a so so story line. But then again I was only ten.