Much-needed trip

Our fourth grandchild was born at the end of May. I am trying to re-landscape our home. I am tearing apart a deck that used to have a swimming pool with it. Lorraine retired at the end of June. It has been a busy year, so we have not been able to get up to the property as much as we can or should. I have been semi-retired for 2-1/2 years now, but don't understand why I don't have more/extra time to travel up when I used to do it all of the time while still having a full-time job.

Time goes by very fast, and priorities change along the way. Family has been our priority for the past few years with my step-father's decline into Alzeimers and eventual passing, my father-in-law's illness and eventual passing, and grandchildren coming into our lives. Family should come first, but I sure wish we could get to the property more often. I remember the days were I/we would head up there about every three weeks.

But, we do the best that we can. When we are present on the property, I can look at it one way as "this is taking way longer than it should be taking", referring to opening for business. But when I look at the things we have been able to accomplish with the help of some amazing friends and family, I have a true appreciation for how far we have come in the past 14 years of this adventure.

We decided that we could fit-in a Sunday-to-Tuesday trip before other priorities creep in again. We left around noon on Sunday and arrived in BRF around 4:00 PM. We decided to try to eat at a sit-down restaurant before heading out to the property rather than going there, having to run back into town, and then back out again gig. But you know what? None of the establishments that we wanted to go-to were open on Sundays. Surprising since this is prime vacation season in the Jackson/Clark County area.

We ended up at Perkins to eat breakfast for supper. We got food in our stomachs, and that is all I can say about that experience.

We landed at the property around 5:30. We jumped into our normal arrival activities.... get the camper and bedding set up, unload truck, etc. I needed a new battery for the ATV, so installed that to get it running again. The battery was a bit of a nightmare....

I ordered an OEM Polaris battery from an online partner. When I received it, there was moisture in the bag, out on some packaging, and a spot where it had leached through the box. The box could have held 6-8 batteries of this size, but they sent one battery in this huge box with minimal packaging. Don't ya' think that could get damaged during shipment? Yeah, so sulfuric acid leaking out of the battery.

So, I contact the company that I purchased-from. They told me they could not replace this battery unless I took it to a Polaris dealer to get a code on it so it could be covered by Polaris warranty. The nearest Polaris dealer to me is about an hour away from our home. There is no "code" for "the battery was damaged, causing it to leak sulfuric acid". The ridiculousness of it is unbelievable. I don't think there is a code for "your battery is damaged and is leaking". Maybe I am wrong... maybe they really do take their meter and it tells them that.

Don't ya' think that if I had a Polaris dealer near me, that I would have just gone there to buy a battery rather than buying it online?

"We sent you a battery in a huge box with minimal packaging causing it to be damaged and leak sulfuric acid. You sent us pictures showing the packaging and all of the moisture present. But we want you to take it to a Polaris dealer an hour away from you to have them look at it and tell you that the battery is damaged and the code is xyz before we will replace the battery."

Wow.

I had to get pretty nasty talking with them about the fact that this is not a warranty claim against Polaris. This is a shipping damage claim against the online retailer, who is trying to pass it along as a warranty claim against Polaris. I called them out on this and threatened to contact Polaris to let them know that one of their authorized parts dealer is pushing their responsibilities onto Polaris. I wonder how often they do this to Polaris. I really want to include their URL in this blog post, but know it is probably not wise to do this, so I won't.

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I will just say this: if you ever need to buy Polaris parts online, you will only find one retailer that can do this. Don't buy from them.

And I won't even talk about the various clothing that now has holes in it as the sulfuric acid burned holes in them before my brain figured out "this is not water leaking out".

Thanks for letting me vent. Let's move on....

We really did not do much work since it was so late in the day, and we really did not want to get sweaty and bug-spray-ee that would force us to need to go to the campground to shower. So, we had a nice night, sitting on the porch, watching the campfire. Funny..... when I was designing the building and added that porch, I had no idea how important that porch would become. No matter who is there, we always seem to sit on the porch rather than sit around the campfire. I think it is probably because it is a solid, tick-less piece of ground. But yeah, the porch has become very important, especially when there is rain or storms that we can experience without having to physically be "in" the building.

It was a great night of sleep! Unlike me, I did not get up until 7:40. I just did some small tasks that needed to be done until Lorrain awoke. She worked on making us some french toast, while I fired-up the brush mower to mow areas our mowers have not mowed due to wood debris from the tree removal earlier this year. So, I mowed the driveway and south of the building where we have some timbers drying out and our new paths to the valley floor.

After breakfast, we headed to the clearing near the water. Lorraine was going to do her normal cleaning-of-the-stairs that get covered in pine needles and animal poopoo (most likely racoons). I was going to tackle the trail cameras to change out batteries and snag the SD cards. I ended up having three bad cameras that I had to bring home to work-on. Great.

I grabbed the weed-whacker and travelled down to the water. We had only been here one other time this year, and we had not even gone to the water on that trip. So it was pretty overgrown and needed to be cleaned up.

I actually am just itching to get back down there to do more bagging. We need stairs from the lower level to the middle level prior to the stairs. Then we need to finish the stairs/walkway up to the bottom of the stairs. But the bagging we have done..... wow, it looks awesome and functions perfectly. In prior blog posts I have talked about Envirolok bags that are such an ingenious solution for taming erosion and being able to mold your land near the water, knowing this is approved by the state of Wisconsin.

We had a late lunch of hot dogs and potato salad, and then started to clean up tree-removal-debris from the driveway. We started at the portion nearest to the road, and worked our way up the hill, picking up the larger pieces and raking the rest into the forest.

After all of that work, we were tired and sweaty, and it was time to go for a swim in the water. So that is what we did, and actually relaxed a longer in the water than we usually do. But the weather was so nice (although muggy) and the work felt so good.... the water was fantastic. I love our water. We have about 700 feet of frontage, but our time is spent on the final 200 feet of frontage where the boulders exist. The bottom of the creek is granite with sand, and is probably shin-deep. But the most northerly boulder, that we call "Fidro", has a deeper hole that is about chest-deep. So when I want to cool off, I get in the water at our tiny little sand beach, and water-walk my way up to Fidro. The current gets pretty fast coming around that boulder, so when I am done cooling off, I can literally lay on my back and float back down to "the beach". There is also two very large, but flat, boulders that are great to sit upon or lay upon just to chillax a bit.

I have become enlightened. I really always wanted to be off-grid, and I won't bore you with the reasons-why. But we think the next priority is water. This leads to thinking about the well.... and a hand-pump (Bison). But I also have some Eufy cameras that I would really like to install there. But they need wifi or 4G LTE. Don't have wifi there, and cell reception is almost non-existant. If I stand in a certain circle, put my phone in the air, and spin three times, I might get a signal. Not really, but you get the idea. I need a cellular signal booster so I can install the cameras that just help secure the property better for us.

I had designed the solar system for the utility building, and I actually have all of the components.... just have to put it all together yet. But there comes a time where we either need to get this solar system in place, or hook to the grid and work the solar in later. I need electricity for the cell booster or wifi router. So..... we had an appointment with an electrical contractor to see about having electricity installed on the building. The transformer is already at the road, so I need to get it from there and into the building.

So we met with Greg, and started that ball in motion.

If we are having electricity to the building, then why would I do a hand-pump for the well? Hmmmm.

We had a great supper of tacos, went up to the campground to get showers in, and then another night on the porch watching the campfire. Good sleep, and good burritos in the morning before departing.

It was a great trip and we were able to accomplish everything on our checklist. Life is good.