Thats pretty much what I said when I visited the Beta Site today…the first time I’ve been up there since it changed hands. Specifically, into my hands. I could not help myself but to say “See that tree over there? Mine. That one? Mine. That rock? Mine.” I also scolded a bird for trespassing. I have a bit of a territorial streak in me.

I wanted to head up there for more than just childish selfish reasons…I wanted to see what the roads were like, and more importantly, to see how much humanity was up there. This is an are that is well past ten miles from electricity. The number of year-round residents isn’t going to be huge…though they are there. My concern was my two closest neighbors on the two properties that were kittycorner from me. Neither property showed signs of their roads being used. At least, not terribly recently.

Of course, the road to my property (and , wow, it takes some getting used to saying ‘my property’) was equally unused. The only prints remaining in the snow were from the local wildlife and the cattle that roam the area.

A few trees had decided theyd give their lives to block the road into the Beta Site and they will get removed in the spring when the snow melts. In the meantime, they do yeoman service deterring any trespassers.

And once you get to the top of the hill, you can see down into the proposed building area.

The remaining snow was very patchy in the timber and there were plenty of places in the pines where the ground was nothing but beds of pine needles on dirt. Sat there for a while and listened to the blissful silence of…nothing. No cars, no trains, no people, nothin’…just the way I like it. It was probably about 50 degrees and sunny at that point so it was pretty dang nice to be out there. A light pullover and ballcap were plenty.

One of the reasons I wanted to get up there was because I wanted to see where along the route would be the optimal place to unload the side-by-side and continue the journey. Later this month I’ll be picking up a trailer to haul the side-by-side out there. I need to find a spot along the route where I can safely and securely park the trailer and my truck while continuing on the side-by-side. The road to the Beta Site is an easy enough, though bumpy and twisty, ride in the non-snowy season. However, once the snow sets in theres some parts that are definitely sphincter-clenchingly treacherous. Certainly, throwing some chains on the tires of my small truck wold go a long way but there will come a point where the snow or other conditions call for something a bit more dedicated to crappy terrain. So..side-by-side.

There were portions of the property that were knee deep in snow and portions that were completely bare. I definitely should have brought along my snowshoes, as well as some gaiters and yaktrax.

And, one other reason for the trip – remote game cameras. I received a couple remote game cameras for Christmas and deiced to try setting one up to keep an eye on things. I don’t necessarily expect to see much in the way of trespassers at the moment, but I would like to get the familiarity with the system and process so that when summer gets here I can set up a network of cameras at the most likely access points.

So…long day. My plan is to pick up the trailer in three weeks and haul the side-by-side out there and get some miles and experience on it. I will also be dragging up a loaded Monovault with some essentials so that theres at least some resources up there in case I do actually have to hide out up there before I get the place built up.

But, I gotta say, it was a very novel feeling to know that everything I looked at belonged to me (for as long as I pay the $50 annual property taxes, anyway.)

Oh, and the road that you see in the pictures above? It’s steep. One of the other things I wanted to do while I was up there was make sure the realtor had removed their signs. They had not. But, as it turns out, those For Sale signs are made out of a corrugated plastic that was perfect for sitting my butt on and roaring downhill at breakneck speed before tumbling out into the snow. That was fun.

What exactly is the purpose of the Beta Site? Is it the next step in my life where I eschew living in town and move to an ‘off grid’ lifestyle of careful energy usage, wood chopping, always worrying about well pumps and water…or is it an ‘in case of emergency’ sort of ‘acceptable’ shelter that while not having ‘all the comforts of home’ does provide orders of magnitude of safety over being homeless?

In short, is it a lifestyle or a lifeboat? Well, kinda sorta both…but not at the same time.

At the moment, and for the immediate future, it’s a lifeboat. A secondary location to pick up and run to in case, for whatever reason, living where I live now becomes untenable. As a lifeboat, it doesn’t need to look like something out of ‘Country Living Magazine’. It just needs to keep me warm, fed, safe, and secure. That can look like just a glorified campsite, it can look like a tweaked out garden shed, it can look like a small trailer, that can look like…well…any weatherproof box with a roof and some accommodations.

But the end goal is for it to be more than that. The end goal is for it to be a comfortable, functional, ‘homey’ place where I can snowmobile in on Dec 1, turn on the lights, fire up the woodstove, put on some quiet Spotify Christmas music, put my feet up, and watch the snow fall outside without seeing another human being until Jan 1. Thats the idealized and romanticized version, of course. I’m fully aware that its going to take a good bit of time (and money, unfortunately) to get to that.

So lifeboat vs lifestyle…for the next year, maybe two, its definitely just a place that I can run off to if need be. It’ll have some very(!) basic features but it will still give me more options than if I didn’t have the place at all. And over the next year or two, it’ll morph into something more than just a ‘bare bones’ destination. The final goal is something that is on par, in terms of convenience and appointments, with where I live now…flush toilet, hot water, heat and lighting, etc, etc. all hidden away at the end of a road no one really wants to drive down.

My birthday is in the summer, so Im thinkng that at my next milestone birthday in 2027 I’d like to have the overwhelming majority of things done, if not entirely done. We’ll see how it goes.

Independent-minded, and often libertarian, off-grid types often gravitate towards geodesic domes. The domes do have a lot going for them, but they aren’t what I had in mind. At least, not for a primary dwelling. However, for a storage shed or similar structure, there is some appeal…most notably space. I was curious and started dinking around the internet and found this. As a storage building, this would have a lot going for it. Most notably, the requisite building materials…2×4’s, a saw, and a cordless screwdriver…are easily transportable and easy to work with. The size of the dome is just a matter of deciding how long you want to make your 2×4 segments.

I like the idea of something that is relatively simple to put together and doesn’t require anything that doesn’t fit in the back of a pickup truck. I also like the idea that since the construction requires a known number of pieces of particular lenght, I can easily calculate a finished cost and calculate a revised cost if I want to change the dimensions slightly.

Disadvantages? Well, they sure look weird. But Im less about aesthetics, in this case, and more about utility and ease of construction.Then theres also the matter of how to skin it. I’d be curious if covering it in layers of hardware cloth or chicken wire would allow a person to skin it with cement. There would be weight considerations, but Id think you wouldnt need a terribly thick layer to create a waterproof and durable covering.

I might need to investigate this a bit further. One of the first things I need to do at the Beta Site is get some sort of covered structure up there to enable me to stage things, have a place to roll out a sleeping bag, and act as a small workspace. As I’ve said before, the road infrastructure up there isn’t, in my opinion, up to snuff for hauling in a prefabricated storage shed. I suppose a knocked-down storage shed might work but any one wall is going to be larger than the space available in the back of a pickup truck.

Interesting stuff to explore and think about.

On a side note, I’m curious to see how many posts I need to make tagged ‘Beta Site’ before it appears as a ‘frequently used tag’ in the sidebar.

So, back to wargaming the Beta Site. I was thinking of using Uponor Pex for the basic interior water delivery needs. There are other options, of course, there’s the old-school copper piping which is going to be expensive, require a bit of work to cut and assemble, and isn’t exactly freeze-resistant. Pex, on the other hand, is easy to work with, goes together like Lego, and is less likely to burst if frozen. Additionally, it really adds itself to adding more connections and that sort of thing.

Uponor Pex connector and collar on L., regular Pex connectors and collars on R.

Uponor Pex with collars and connectors

Some plumbing experts I know have been nice enough to answer my questions and show me the various fittings and tools required to work with pex material. We took a piece of Uponor Pex, folded it in half so it had a kink that blocked water flow and then straightened it out. Waved a propane torch over it for a few minutes and the kink completely straightened out to the point that you couldnt even see a sign it was there. And, I am told, the structure of the Uponor Pex is such that when youo heat it up like that, the affected region becomes stronger than what it was before the kink in the pipe.

Connections were made by expanding the pipe and a collar, then slipping the expanded pipe over the connector, and the pex then constricted down to form a seal. The pex, I am told, will have memory that keeps it trying to constrict to its original dimension.

So I got to experiment with cutting, flaring, and otherwise playing with this stuff and its really hard to see a downside. My casual and uninformed opinion is that this stuff, if it lives up to its marketing, is awesome and perfect for my needs – its easy to use, durable, modular, allows for easy modifications, is freeze resilient, and won’t break the bank.

For a small structure, this seems like an ideal way to have an easily maintainable and flexible piping system within the structure. I need to investigate it more, but it seems like a good choice.

I wanna thank everybody who took the time to comment on my question about Starlink. For those of you who want the TL;DR version, the overwhelming consensus seems to be that the Starlink Mini, which is native 12v, is the way to go for a middle-of-nowhere off-grid sort of situation.

So, when its time to get some form of connectivity out there, that’ll be the choice.

In other news, I received the copy of the deed to the property in the mail the other day. I guess thats the ultra-official notice I need to let myself relax and consider this little adventure done, done, done.

Speaking of, I tried to get up there over the weekend and made it about 2/3 of the way there before the iced-over road conditions, on the sloping road, alongside a steep drop off, made me decide that it just wasn’t worth the risk. But it reinforced two things – first, I need to investigate alternate routes and b) I need to get a four-wheeler or side-by-side to navigate in these sorts of conditions. So, more things to budget for.

Another thing I’m working on is to locate and prepare a ‘foot accessible access point’. At the lower elevation, its not too difficult to get a vehicle in there. In that lower elevation theres an easily recognizable and locatable area that is almost exactly two miles from the property. Between that point and the property is two sections of land. (For those who don’t know, a section is 640 acres – one square mile.) One section is private, one is public. I’ll need to contact the landowner of the private section and ask for permission to ‘shed hunt’ or hunt on the property and that’ll give me the opportunity to see how that hike looks in terms of terrain and elevation gain. In a perfect world, if the end of the world occurs in a blizzard in the middle of winter and, for whatever reason, I cannot get a four-wheeler or snowmobile in through the road I need to have an ‘if all else fails’ way of getting to the Beta Site. So, my plan is, during the milder season, find a start point and hike in there, keeping a GPS track of exactly where I’m going but also trying to do it on a course thats a simple ‘follow magnetic bearing of xxx for two miles and youre there’. If that works out, then I’ll stage some simple gear at the start point and halfway point to facilitate things under a ‘worst case’ scenario.

This winter will be a lot of planning, spreadsheeting, purchasing, and staging. I’ve already started purchasing the various tools and implements I think I’ll be needing in the spring and staging them at the storage unit. First thing in the spring will be to head up there, build a deck for the tent (yet to be purchased), and get that going so I have a little base of operations for the subsequent activities. Although it’s entirely possible that I’ll be able to get up there with minimal difficulty before June 1, I am using that date as the ‘launch date’ for things.

So, for now, lotsa theory awaiting practical experimenting.