Weekend of August 28th, 2010

There's nothing like starting out a weekend right. My neighbors invited me to a bar in Laramie -Friday night- where we watched a country-funky-bluegrass-ish band. Holland Wofford. These guys are really fun to see live. Thanks Gayle and Dennis.

On Saturday morning, I woke up with ambitions of making huge progress and then realized that I didn't have all the materials that I needed to complete the wall building around the circumference of the firepit (If I would have thought about what I actually had up at the property, it would have been a pretty simple deduction -duh). In reviewing my per-dic-a-ment, I considered some alternatives. My initial plan was to stack bricks or pavers along the wall and fill in the gaps behind with concrete/cement. There's a lot of bricks or pavers needed to fill a firepit with a diameter of 16 feet and walls around 2 1/2 tall!!! After completing a section, I looked at the large gaps that would need to be filled in with concrete and felt that the way I was going about it didn't really make sense. I needed to come up with an "easy" way to make a stable wall that would survive the Wyoming winds and freeze-thaw actions up at 8300'. I was also not sure that making a top heavy concrete wall was the right way to do this, since the tops of the walls have eroded away. It finally dawned on me that I have almost all of the materials that I need to make these walls very stable using earthen building techniques. Following the earthbag concept, I planned to fill either woven poly-propylene bags or burlap bags with a soil-sand-gravel mixture to make solid walls. This methodology would fill in the bigger gaps near the top of the walls, where the walls have eroded in from the weather and usage. It will also allow me to make solid edges at the top of the wall when I finish over it with a concrete-stucco like finish.

Since I didn't have the earthbags to complete this over the weekend, I trenched out more of the kitchen and shed perimeter. I hope to have this perimeter foundation poured in the next few weeks.

This is all I have for now. Until next weekend (which is actually tomorrow!!!) . So much for finishing the weekend out as it started!!! It was a pretty fun weekend overall, considering.

Did I mention that we found a lost border-collie and eventually got her back to her owner. Cricket and I drove through Vedauwoo proper and the campground for a good hour or more trying to find her papa. It turned out she escaped from a ranch down the road.

I was also reunited with a friend that I knew and climbed a little with when I lived in Laramie (something like 13 or 14 years ago~).

Hopefully someone who is reading this silly blog, and considering their own earthen project does not have to struggle and back track quite as much as I have. Luckily, I don't mind this and have been learning a lot about the process and myself. I've worked out the bugs (or at least some of the bugs) for ya~