First trip to Wyoming!!

We went to Wyoming back in March 2012 to look at the land.  This was our very first time to Wyoming and we fell in love!!

This is my husband (Scott) and I (Kristen) in our first picture together on our land!! 

We have the most beautiful rocks at the entrance to the property.  I'm sure I'll learn more about them when we're out there, but if I remember correctly, we were told the colors on them are from an algae/fungus growth that comes in different colors including the oranges and lavenders that we saw!

 

We also have these beautiful cacti along the ground!

 

 

Here are several more pictures that we took of the land.  As you can see, there is a small shed and a satellite dish that was left here (they won't be there for long once we move!).  There are natural culverts or dips in the land and lots of sage brush.

 

 

In these last 3 pictures, I was getting a feel of the back property line.  I stood on the back corner of the property while Scott and the realtor walked to the other side.  We estimated that a complete lap around the property is about a mile and a half (very rough approximation).



The Initial Planning Stage

Background:  We purchased 37.5 acres of land in Wyoming a few years ago.  The land has no trees, no water features and best of all, no grass!! YEAH no more mowing!!  What we do have is a beautiful, 180 degree mountain view with land that has sage brush and small cacti growing along the ground.  Plus we have this gorgeous rock formation just at the entrance to our land.

There is NO electricity on our property (there is at the road/entrance to our land), there is no house or structure in place yet, and there is no septic or well either.  Basically it is a beautiful, clean slate for whatever we want!!

There is approximately a 2 mile gravel road that we live on before we get to the main road.  We are ~35-45 minutes away from the nearest anything.

The plan:
We are building in phases with the goal of not having a mortgage.  Our initial home is going to be 20'x28' with 10' ceilings and the main space having a living room, bathroom, kitchen and closet.  There will be a loft above the bathroom and kitchen where our bedroom will be.

Energy efficiency is an absolute must in our plans. One of the things I hate most is having bills - gas bills, electric bills, mortgage, etc.  The more we can do now to save $$ for the future is the plan.  Some of the things we're looking into:

• Insulating the house not only on the inside (1/3 of it) but also on the outside too.  The Cold Climate Housing Research Center (http://www.cchrc.org/) has an instructional video on YouTube that Scott found that basically shows you how to better insulate a home for cold weather.  The basics of it: you insulate 1/3 on the inside and 2/3rds on the outside of the house to maintain a temperature above the dew point so no mold can grow in the walls.
• We will not be heating the house with a furnace or cooling the house with central air.  Personally, in our Ohio house, it was a huge waste of money.  We rarely used 2 of the 3 bedrooms and only 1 room of the basement.  Why heat/cool the entire house? In our Ohio house, we used window air conditioners during the summer and only occasionally were they turned on.  In the winter, I hated using the furnace (mostly because I am cheap) so we'd never get above 65-67 degrees and mostly stayed around 62-63 degrees.  I would turn the on the furnace in the morning only to get the house up to 67 degrees, then during the day we'd heat only the rooms we were in using infrared electric heaters.  We will be bringing these heaters with us to WY but will also be adding a wood burning stoves too which will be our main source of heat.
• We have all energy efficient appliance that we plan to bring with us to WY.

We have lots and lots of planning to do and as we determine what we're doing, I'll be including pictures and details of the process.

The most interesting part of this - we are physically building our home all ourselves!  Just the 2 of us.

One of the most frequent questions we get asked is "Where will you be living while you build?"
We are taking a 16'x7' cargo trailer with us. We will sleep in part of the trailer and also use the trailer to haul building materials in as well as storage for tools and supplies too.  There is no running water, electricity, a toilet or shower.  So we're going to be creative:)  We have 4 cats and as a result LOTS of empty cat litter tubs.  These will be our portable 'toilets' and for showers we will either sponge bath with heated water over the propane mini camping stove, use lots of wet wipes, or, when we can, we'll hit up a local campground to use the showers.  I believe the term 'roughing it' is appropriate here!  Luckily we do have a neighbor about a mile away that has kindly told us that we can get water from his house. 

Some of the things on our to-do list before we head out (we're hoping to head out in April to start building, weather permitting):

• In January we are submitting all applications to the state - septic and well
• Scheduling our Well Digger guy as that will determine where we will be building
• Scheduling our septic guy who we will also have dig the foundation
• Creating our final building plans down to the specific details.  Note: we are not using pre-purchased blue-prints or designs.  We are creating our own design to fit our needs and our style.
• We need to finish packing all our belongings, selling what we aren't taking with us, and purchase more tools/supplies we need while in WY.

Why Wyoming? Why would we move? Why....

This seems to be the question everyone asks. Why would we uproot from Ohio where all of our family is from, where we both grew up, where we have a home and jobs, where we have friends and some of the most amazing neighbors... why?

We have been told we are stupid, that this is the worst decision we've ever made, and we've been harassed with questions and judgments.  But thankfully, that only came from a few people!

So why are we doing this?

• Scott and I both grew up in the country, on farms with land.  Where we live now, we have no land and no room to expand. 
• We do not enjoy our current living situation.  We live too close to town, the traffic is crazy on our road, we can see into our neighbors yards and even sometimes their windows from within our house (we LOVE our neighbors very much, but we just live too close), our driveway is way too small  with no parking so we always have to do the 'vehicle rodeo'.... etc
• We dream of having a 4-wheeler and having a purpose for it! 
• We are outdoorsy and adventurous, and here in Ohio we are so limited with what we can do.
• We live in this beautiful, amazing world that God created, so why not enjoy it?!  Why not live in a place that takes your breath away everyday!
• Finally (the list could go ON and ON), why not? This is a decision Scott and I have made for us, for what's best for our family, and for what we want out of life.  It is ok to ask questions, but please keep the negativity and judgments to yourself.  We're happy to share this adventure with you so you can be a part of our adventure too!

We are so excited to get this adventure started and can't wait to call Wyoming home!!