I can say without a doubt that the winter of 2020 felt like the longest winter EVER. 😉 Not only was our business still severely impacted by the Covid restrictions, we also couldn’t go to Horsefly to start building. So we did spend a lot of time scheming.

We lucked out and were able to purchase an old truck camper from local friends. So we knew that’s where we’d sleep when starting the building. At some point in time, before buying the camper, we even considered sleeping in an outfitter tent. But the cost of that would have been very high and on top of that, critters (especially mice) love getting in and eating your food as well as your fabrics and furniture. 😛

We also decided we needed a truck. Our city car wouldn’t work for transporting lumber and building materials. It has a glass roof and a small trunk, so we searched and searched for an oooold truck. Enter Betsy.

Our truck Betsy

After weeks of searching the internet, we found our dream scenario car in Duncan (on Vancouver Island): A 1988 Ford F-250. The cheap price made it worth our ferry trip. We were definitely clueless as to what to look for, but lucked out with the seller being honest about the shortcomings. (F.e. we can only use one of the two fuel tanks, hahaha)

Jelger gave himself a crash course in car mechanics (the man just loves puzzles, any puzzle). And he fixed a few minor things. And just to be sure, a mechanic also fixed something small. We wanted to avoid getting stranded somewhere in the mountains a few hundred kilometres from our destination.

The outhouse prep

Our plans for the outhouse quickly grew “somewhat out of proportion”. Mind you, we had way too much time on our hands and were 100% focussed on this project. Jelger had started purchasing power tools for construction and I looked at outhouses online for inspiration.

We settled on creating a 6×8 foot outhouse with a vanity and a window. 😉 Fancy stuff. Jelger started the creation of the vanity after I scored a free sink on Facebook Market Place. People in Vancouver throw away all sorts of things, but this sink was something else.

With my newly discovered excitement about Facebook Marketplace, I also scored a great window. That’s right, this outhouse was designed with a bathroom window.

And last but not least, we purchased a big tote. After much consideration, we figured we’d want to keep the outhouse in one place. Often people just “dig a hole” and when it’s full, they fill it with sand and move the entire outhouse. But the fact that we’d build it on a slope and that it’s so big, made us decide to just contain everything and have it emptied out every two years or so. We heard from other people in Horsefly that use this service and you can split the cost of transportation.

Prepared as much as we could

As the days turned longer, we did as much preparation as we could for our first visit. We collected kitchenware, some small camping propane cooking fires, scored a bunch of buckets (and yes, they turned out SO useful) and a water dispensary.

A battery was also extremely important. We needed electricity to power our tools and ended up purchasing the Jackery. We love this thing and think it’s worth every penny. There are several models, we have the “explorer 1000” (Basically our entire outhouse and cabin frame built were powered by it, connected to two solar panels). Check out our affiliate link on Amazon for our electric setup: Canada or USA.

As much as we tried to imagine all the details, of course experience would later on teach us what we were missing.

Finally there for our first stay

And finally at the end of April, it was time to go. The ground was no longer frozen. I drove our city car and Jelger drove Betsy. Kudos to him for driving that beast all the way to Horsefly. She is LOUD and has quirks. And she definitely doesn’t go fast when having to drive up hill. 😉 And of course she guzzles gas. So this would be her one and only long track!

We’re very lucky to have such good friends in Horsefly. Our friend Kyle helped us move and set up the camper when we arrived. He loaded it up his truck, got it up our steep driveway and helped us secure it on the ground. It’s stacked on some solid wood from his shed.

With not knowing how everything in the camper worked yet, we had a fire and just called in an early night. The nights were still chilly (aka sometimes still – 5!) around that time. We camped out for 3.5 weeks!

But that’s for a next post.

Tanja