Tag Archives: Livingston Co Rd Comm

2015/05/12 (T) Dealing with the County

I finally paid a visit this morning to the Oceola Township offices and talked to the assessor and zoning administrator.  I had a satellite image of our property on which I had drawn the proposed barn and driveway.  All they need in order to issue a land use permit is for me to show the size of the building and the setbacks on the image.  I also visited the Livingston County Building Department.  I talked to one of the counter clerks who had me talk to Rick, who is one of the inspectors.  He had just built a large pole barn and used 6×6 posts set in 26″ diameter holes back filled with concrete.  The bottom of the posts need to be at least 48″ below grade to get below the frost line so I will figure on posts four feet longer than my exterior wall height.

Based on my preliminary online research and visits the land use, building and electrical permits are the only other ones I will need in order to put up a bus barn.  The clerk gave me a check sheet of the documentation I will need to provide.  I would have to file some additional paperwork with the County Health Department, but would not need permits from them or from the Drain or Road Commissions.

I drove to the Township offices on Latson Road by way of Hacker and M-59.  Hacker was so bad the last few days due, in part, to heavy rains that it was more pothole than road and many of them were larger and deeper than normal.  The road grader was repairing the road and it was digging deep.  The grader was still working when I returned home but the road was already much better.  The road needs to be rebuilt with a substantial amount of road gravel and with proper drainage ditches along both sides.  Or paved.  Paved would be good.  Linda read something last fall that indicated Oceola and Hartland Townships had agreed to pave Hacker Road from M-59 south to Golf Club.  We checked when we got home this spring but could not find any reference to such a project.

Back at the house I settled in to create a scale drawing of the floor plan of our bus and then draw in the 16″x16″ floor tiles.  I added up the various areas yesterday and added 25% for waste, but that turned out to be a low estimate.  By drawing the tiles I was able to count how many I would actually need.  I called Lynch Carpet in Howell and talked to Clint to get a rough price estimate for the materials.  The 16×16 Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tiles are packed 14 to a box and can only be ordered by the box.  We need 190 tiles for the project so we will have to buy 14 boxes (196 tiles).  That turned out to be 50 square feet more than my original estimate, but would leave us with only six full tiles as spares, assuming I do not ruin any during the installation.  Fortunately, the vinyl adhesive and vinyl grout were less expensive than I expected, so even with a freight charge the bottom line was similar to my first estimate.  Using these tiles it will be approximately a $2,000 project.

My layout has the tiles in a standard pattern with the grout lines lined up in two directions, one running parallel to the long axis of the bus and the other perpendicular to that.  I presumed that this would take less tile and require less cutting but after seeing the layout I am not so sure.  I will probably make a second drawing with the tiles turned 45 degrees and see if it makes more efficient use of the tiles.  We plan to use a grout that is very similar in color to the base color of the tiles so the grout lines will tend to blend in rather than standout as a design feature, and perhaps make the orientation of the tiles less important visually.

Later in the afternoon I called Pat at Apex Roofing to let him know our shingle selection.  I left the information in a voice message and Pat called back later to confirm.  We are going to use the Certainteed Max Def Resawn Shake shingle.  We are still thinking about the skylight tubes.  We talked about putting one or two in the living room and possibly one between the kitchen/dining rooms and one in the hallway.  I realized that the air-conditioner would probably be in the way of the one for the kitchen/dining area, so we will not do that one.

Linda made granola today and made baked/stuffed acorn squash for dinner along with an asparagus, carrot, green bean sauté and fresh sweet Bing cherries.  I took care of some e-mail and then we had slices of the Mother’s Day vegan cake.  I called my sister to check on how our grand-niece was doing.  She called me back later and we had a long chat.  Linda and I then watched season 2, Episode 2 of Sherlock.

After Linda fell asleep I was still up (writing) when a noise started and did not stop.  I suspected it was the water sanitizer recharging, as the water softener had recently recharged, but I got up to make sure that’s what it was and not something else like a sump pump that was stuck in the on position.  It was the sanitizer, so I closed the laundry room door to reduce the noise and went back to bed.  I really need to soundproof the laundry room and reprogram the softener and sanitizer to come on at better times.

 

2014/04/22(T) Mockingbird

Cave Country RV Campground has northern Mockingbirds.  Similar In size to Robins, they are grey and white, and masters of song.  We had at least one, maybe more, hanging around our rig early this morning and they started vocalizing at the first hint of daylight, long before sunrise which comes early on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone.  And they sang, and sang, and sang, almost nonstop for more than three hours, and often in plain view of our coach windows where we could watch them.  There are other birds here as well, but the Mockingbirds were a real treat as I do not recall ever hearing them around either of our houses in Michigan even though their year-round range covers all of the lower 48 states.  The cats are also enjoying this spot, having a good view of all the birds on the ground and in nearby small trees.

We had some rain overnight and woke to completely overcast skies and a temperature of 62 degrees F with 100% humidity.  Perhaps a bit surprisingly it was very comfortable inside the rig.  We had a leisurely morning and Linda made her wonderful blueberry vegan pancakes served with real organic maple syrup.  We don’t have these very often and they are a real treat when we do.

We called the Livingston County Road Commission this morning to see when the seasonal load restrictions would be lifted and found out that they “hoped” to check conditions again tomorrow or Thursday.  Counties south of us (Wayne and Washtenaw) were planning to lift the restrictions late this week and the county to the west (Ingham) was planning to lift them next Monday.  In a “normal” season these restrictions would have been lifted on April 16th.  So as of this morning it appears that we will be delaying our return beyond this Thursday when we had planned to pull in to our driveway around mid-day.  Full- and extended-time RVers are fond of saying their plans are “written in Jell-O” and this is just another example of what that means.  (Linda checked the LCRC website later in the day and it had been updated to indicate that the restrictions would be lifted at 6 AM on Monday, April 28.)

Late morning I returned a phone call from Gaye Young.  She chairs the FMCA’s (national) Education Committee, to which I have recently been appointed.  It was our first conversation.  Among other things the committee will be studying RVillage and developing recommendations for FMCA’s involvement.

At noon we headed over to the Mammoth Cave National Park Visitor Center.  We were here seven or eight years ago, but it did not look familiar.  Once inside we learned why; the building had been constructed in 2010 on the site of the former visitor center.  The former adjacent administration building was now a fabulous museum connected to the new visitor center.

Admission to MCNP is free but entrance to the cave is not.  There are now over 400 miles of known/mapped passageways in Mammoth Cave making it the longest cave in the world by a big margin.  Unexplored parts exist for sure and the total extent of the cave is unknown.  We did a cave tour the last time we were here.  Today we were more interested in hiking and photography so we got a trail map and some recommendations from one of the rangers.

From the Visitor Center we took the foot bridge that goes over the ravine, with the trail down to the Historic Entrance to the cave, to the hotel/restaurant building.  We picked up the Heritage Trail and followed it past the hotel rooms and Sunset Terrace rooms to the “Old Guide’s Cemetery” and then to Sunset Point.  From Sunset Point we took a steep switchback trail down to the Echo River Spring Trail and followed it a short distance to its northern terminus where the River Styx emerges from the cave and flows to the Green River not far away.  From here we picked up the Green River Bluffs Trail which eventually returned us to the Visitor Center parking lot.  It was a good hike through the forest with wild flowers and occasional distant views.  I got a few nice photos along the way and will put them in a separate gallery post.

After our hike we had lunch at the hotel coffee shop and recalled having eaten there before.  We ordered a veggie wrap with potato chips and a black bean burger with fries.  Not a completely healthy meal, but still vegan.  We split everything and had a nice variety of food for our late lunch, all of which was very good.

MCNP is large at 53,000+ acres and has extensive “back country” with 70+ miles of trails.  Development, however, is mostly confined to a small area around the Visitor Center, which includes the modern campground, and two additional cave entrance sites. The campground has an entrance station, so we were not able to drive through and have a look.  We both recalled driving through the campground the last time we were here but could recall camping here.  And yet we must have, as we were traveling to Bowling Green, Kentucky in our Itasca Sunrise motorhome to attend the Life On Wheels program.  To paraphrase Wallace Stegner (1983), the National Parks really are “America’s Best Idea.”

We returned to our campground in Cave City and walked around a bit more, taking photos in the late afternoon light.  I spent a little time at the east end of the campground by the train tracks trying to get some photos of a passing train, but I could not get a good vantage point.  Later we had leftovers for dinner, turned on the TV for a while, responded to a volunteer questionnaire for the GLAMARAMA in June, responded to e-mails and RVillage posts, and worked on processing the photos from today.