Here's a few pics documenting my transition from homeless guy and guy who has to hitch hike to work because his car crashed to home owner who has a shiny new truck!
The shiny new truck is a beautiful Pyrite Mica colored 2011 Toyota Tacoma 4 cylinder manual 4X4 extended cab with a 6 foot bed. It's about as stripped down a Tacoma as you can get, as I decided the "off road package" and the "SR5 / TRD package" are basically expensive stuff you don't need. I'm not going to take a $24,000 vehicle anywhere I need rear locking differentials, as good as it looked in the promotional pamphlet! The 4 wheel drive gets me anywhere I need to go, and the 9 inch clearance is nice. I'm getting just over 21 mpg right now which I heard goes up after the first few thousand miles.
This is my beautiful home:
It is located about 6 miles SE of Durango, Colorado, behind some nice people's house that I met on the internet. We're about a mile off Highway 160 up a dirt road. I'm also about a 15 minute walk from Mercy Hospital, which is located in the same valley. Elevation here is about 7,000 feet.
As you can see the home itself is a 1972 cab over camper built by Pilgrim Manufacturing Co, INC. that sits on a flatbed trailer. Got the whole deal for $350, worth at least the price of the flatbed alone! It made it here, just outside Duragno, over the passes from Denver being towed behind a 4 cylinder Subaru.
Some stuff stored under the overhanging front:
It has a lovely new aluminum + tar paper roof I built, as the old roof was frost, sun, and water damaged to hell and leaked terribly.
Along with a leaky roof, the previous owner had also ripped the camper jacks off. This left wood and insulation exposed that could have absorbed water and stressed the siding when driving on the highway. I repaired the damage with "great stuff" spray foam, that I shaved down after it dried. Then I drilled in some aluminum flashing and then caulked around the flashing. Now it's pretty bomb proof.
I have this nice big yard. There are foothills of the La Platas across the valley . The rock making up the hills is Cretaceous - era Mesa Verde Sandstone that was uplifted to steep angles by the laccolithic La Plata mountain range as it rose millions of years ago.
There are a lot of deer and elk that hang out in the valley. We see them around the house pretty often. There are also coyotes. Sometimes packs of them yelp at night.
I have a nice soft bed that is warm. I put extra tarpaper under it to better insulate it from the cold air outside, and I taped up some insulating material under the roof hatch to keep warm air from going up and out as fast.
I have these nice shelves. I have more books stored behind them and there are an additional two shelves further down that do not appear in the picture. Book shelves are nice.
There used to be a fridge here that didn't work. I ripped it out and turned the space into a clothes shelf. It's really a lot more organized than it looks.
There's also a more regular closet with shirts and wetsuits in it
This is the heater I bought from Home Depot. It was only about $40, and it works well. It warms up the place pretty fast, though if I come into the house cold around 2 or 4 am when it's less than about 10 degrees outside it takes a while to warm up.
The kitchen is pretty sweet.
There's a two burner hot plate from Walmart and also one of those kettles that plugs into the electricity and heats water really fast. That is great for tea, coffee, soup, and making hot water for dishes with. The sink is a two basin sink, and over one basin I have put a large wooden cutting board that serves as my prep counter. The drain water from the sink drains outside where it runs into an 8 ft bit of extra aluminum from the roof that carries the water a few feet away.
This prevents the water from building up near the tire just outside of the drain, which through freeze and thaw would threaten to sink the tire in mud.
Electricity itself comes into the house via an extension cord connected to the outside of the house
The original outlet on the outside of the camper was long since cut away so cracking a window, cutting some screen, and running an extension cord was the easiest way to get power in here. Duct tape around the cord keeps cold from coming in. The outlet on the house is routed to a 12 amp breaker, which means if I use the heater and the stove at the same time it trips the breaker. My coworker says I should just buy a higher rated breaker and ask the home owners to install it but I haven't got around to doing this yet.
There is a nice living room too:
This is where the computer usually lives. It gets wifi from the main house that is pretty fast, so I can download movies, or watch the live feed from Al Jazeera English for the latest developments on the Egyptian Revolution. There's enough space for two people to sit and eat across the table from each other.
I put down a second layer of carpet on the floor to keep it from being so cold when I walk on it. ACE hardware sold these great narrow carpet lengths that just fit the "hallway" perfectly.
There is also an absorbent mat on the floor by the door where I leave my shoes so as not to track snow all into the house.
My lighting needs at night have been met by a $9 lamp from Home Depot.
It clips onto anywhere, but usually is clipped onto a cabinet handle. It provides enough light for the whole place on a single one of those energy efficient bulbs.
What's that hanging next to the lamp?
Oh, its my ski pass from Purgatory. Those things sell for a few hundred bucks though mine was free. Haven't used it yet. It's a 73 mile round trip for me to get there, which I don't really feel like driving on my day off. Especially because I own no ski equipment and have never been skiing. I'm sure I'll rent something and try it eventually though.
There are a lot of cabinets that are handy for plates, bowls, food storage, etc...
To some of you reading I am sure this appears to be an arduous existence. This is true, in some ways. But it is looking worth it. Though the transition to living here was akward and difficult I am now making decent money again between two jobs and able to save. From late April to October, life is amazing. People pay me to take them down the river. I get to do private trips on my own. I hang out in desert towns and make friends. I cook hunted bunny rabbit over the campfire. I visit ghost towns and photograph them and write about them. Life is about as free and perfect as possible.
Still I have not found a winter equivalent. I am not a glamorous "ski instructor". I haven't even skied. I just work. I remove your wet carpet and pad and drywall and insulation when your pipes freeze. I feed you food and sell you beers when you come to the ski resort and you get hungry. So it is just work and save. Then the Spring life will be great again. And at least on my days off I get to write.
All my punk rock and Western friends with liberal arts degrees are now applying to law school. They decided that while summer work is fun, the winter sucks. It's too cold to camp, it's hard to find a job, and when you do you still make as much as the guy who dropped out of high school. I'm beginning to consider this... as being covered in fiberglass and not able to take a shower does have its disadvantages. Yet... I still have at least one book to write, I have some river sections on my list I still haven't run, and I am going to need at least two more months in Utah's West Desert. So for now, this is my home. I'll drag it to Utah in the summer and live in it there. Did I mention my rent, including electricity and internet, is only $150 a month?
A happy homeowner
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