Abandoned Summer Camp Not a Selling Feature

News that we bought land has now spread through our group of friends and acquaintances, and so I've been answering a lot of questions as to why we decided to buy on Gambier.

One of the selling features was its proximity to Vancouver, and so to give people a sense of how fast we can get there, I'll run through the trip... "so you drive to Horseshoe Bay, catch the water taxi to the Fircom dock, cut through the abandoned summer camp, and..." - this is usually where they stop me. Pretty much everyone is creeped out by the abandoned summer camp. I mean sure... so these feature prominently in a number of teen horror films, so I guess I can see their point.

Generally I'm not one to let my imagination get the better of me, but then I'm surfing through Flickr searching for photos tagged "Gambier Island", and I find this photo of a creepy doll which was apparently taken at Fircom. What gives?

Surveying the Land, and Next Steps

Now that all of the paperwork is behind us, it feels like we can move onto next few steps. We're planning on having a surveyor swing by to clearly mark the property, since our building site sits so close to the property line.

Once this is done, I figure we'll head on over, and start planning a camp. We've pretty much come to accept that a cabin is not feasible in the immediate future, mostly because we're probably going to have a second child sometime in the next year or so. These kids... it's a good thing they're so cute, because they're really expensive, and they poop all over the place.

Once we've moved past the diaper stage, we should be able to get it together to build something. Frankly I'm fine with this, because this is just when the critters will really be able to start enjoying it. Until then, we'll just have to rough it.

I figure though, that the camp has to be comfortable. And so this end, we're planning on making it not just civilized, but stylin'. It's going to need storage, a nice place to cook, a farout fireplace/pit, and room for a family of four, plus guests.

I've spend enough time living out of a dome tent to know that I don't want to do this if we can at all help it. So to get past this, I've been looking into prospector tents. These durable canvas tents are tough, look good, and last a long time. I'd like to maybe throw up a few of these, and build some simple plywood platforms to get us off of the ground.

A cook tent, or shade structure will work as a kitchen/bar, so long as we can lock our gear up in the storage shed. And for the fireplace, I found a guy who goes by the name Satan, who does really cool metal fabrication, and sculpting. Hopefully his prices aren't too high, or diabolical.

"We don't even know what we bought"

Finally, FINALLY we have closed the deal on the land. It was a long time coming. The developer had to settle a few subdivision issues with the Island Trust (or something like that), and this took until late December, and then suddenly our conveyancer suddenly tells us: "we-have-to-close-right-now. NOW damn you!"

Tammy ran around like a fart in a mitt to get all of our paper work together, and transfer the money, but it's done, and so now we're left with a "oh no... whadda we gonna do now?" sorta feeling.

Seriously. We don't even know what we bought. I think we've actually seen about 5% of the 5 acres, and I don't really remember it all that well. I think we're going to plan a visit as soon as the weather improves, and do some exploring.

The current plan o' the week is to simple set up a skookum camp that we can use for the next few years while we get our shit together to build a proper cabin.