After getting up, I gathered what I needed to mark the four corners of the property (wooden stakes, hammer, orange construction paint and Garmin handheld eTrex GPS) and started the process. I found the GPS coordinates of each of the four corners from the Apache County website. I entered these into the eTrex as waypoints and started walking until I was standing directly over the first corner waypoint. Or so I thought.

I would mark a spot, walk away from it, return to it and the eTrex said I wasn't where I was supposed to be. So I tried again and marked a new spot, walked away, came back and the eTrex said, "Nope. Try again."

After doing this way too many times, eventually (about a half hour later, it seemed) I got to the point where I was fairly confident I had finally marked the right point.

As I continued to use the eTrex, I came to two conclusions:

• 1) I had to hold the eTrex steady in the exact same position until a number of "cycles" were completed between the eTrex and the GPS satellites. With each cycle, where I was standing lined up more closely with the waypoint, and
• 2) I was holding a "dead weight" hammer with metal shot inside it and the metal can of construction paint since I thought it would only be a matter of seconds to locate the spot, pound in the stake and paint it. WRONG. I put both of these on the ground about 10' or 15' away.

This seemed to help quite a bit, but I was still not 100% satisfied with the process. Even so, since my patience with this task had worn thin, I moved on and completed marking the remaining 3 corners. Due to my difficulties, I may see if I can find someone who has done this before. Hopefully someone who is not terribly expensive, yet can provide me legal proof of my property boundaries.

Now I could start loading the truck and get ready to return home. Even with the heater, which worked perfectly well last night, I decided to call it quits. The nights are too cold this time of year and one thing I of course knew, but forgot about was that the days are so much shorter than in the warmer months, around 3 hours shorter. And I might not get up right after sunrise because it is so cold out. That makes the available working hours that much shorter.

One thing I learned from this trip was that I will be getting a tent for the next trip(s). I'm thinking of getting a cheapo 4- to 6-person tent with enough room to unpack all the non-tool stuff and have it be easy to get to (possibly, even insulated, better for Winter and Summer). Sleeping in the truck bed was fine, but that meant any time I needed to use the truck as a truck, I had to take out everything bed-related - and then set it all back up again for the next night - a real pain.

As far as my next trip is concerned, I thought I was going to fence in the "front" side of the property. But because of the driveway gate, I'm now thinking I'll do that side last. The other three sides will be straight runs of wire.

There was more rain than usual during this year's Monsoon season. A fair amount of road maintenance must have been performed. One of the main roads seemed as though it had been completely washed out and regraded. My road also seemed as though it had a fair amount of work done on it. I'm glad to see the county is doing some beneficial work with my property taxes. Due to this recent work, the culvert I saw on my last trip seemed to be nonexistent this time around. I was able to drive directly onto the property. This also meant the culvert pipe I was planning on installing at almost the same time as the barbed wire, now may be able to wait for a while. I'm glad I didn't spend the $800 or more it will cost.

When the road was regraded, some raised mounds of dirt along the sides were present. These were either "accidental side effects" of the regrading work or done purposefully to channel rain water away from our properties. I'd like to think it was for the latter reason. Since I flattened these out a bit when I entered and exited the property, I rebuilt them when I left for home. I don't want any more damage done to my property than has to take place. The two photos show what I did (unfortunately not very clearly - it was late).

Tap/Click on the thumbnail above for some photos from today.

 

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