A Surfeit of Stupid

It's Spring and the Erkharts are BACK AT IT for year three!

IT being:
- digging holes in the Wyoming desert.
- dodging cows on the road to the domestead.
- getting stuck right behind two 18-wheelers getting all road-rage-y with each other and creating a rolling roadblock on I-80 (scary stupid.)
- watching a girl "driving" by steering with her chin while toking up with a pipe (stoned stupid.)
- marveling at the number of teenagers packed into the cargo area of a station wagon that was hurtling through traffic (intimations of invincibility stupid.)

Wow.  Looks like we need to just stay off the roads.

Fat chance of that though, we're all ready to head back out while the dirt is nice and damp and the cows are still small enough to chase away with a big stick.  Besides, we started the year with some nice momentum.

Look what we dug out yesterday!

 

The circle is about 14 feet across - took us about an hour of digging, cussing and pulling up some really stubborn sagebrush bushes. Here's where it is in relation to the courtyard complex:

 

Basically, right across the driveway from it.  Next trip, we'll dig down a bit more, lay fire pit ventilation pipes, lay a short foundation wall and build a dome on it.  Then the wife gets to play in the mud and mortar over the whole thing while the husband finishes the fire pit.

 After that, we've got this:

 

We think we have enough bottles to get the bathroom walls up to height in a weekend.  Then it's a matter of getting the roof on, a door hung and the throne installed.

And then the wall building will begin again in earnest.  

This is where the wife left off last year with the road-facing berm wall:

 

Husband's been busy all winter making bricks for the continuation of said wall.  What you see in the photo isn't even 1/4 of them.  She's got her work cut out for her.  :)