Friday, May 20, 2011

Your Thoughts Please?


Living in the wilderness provides some very interesting living.  It requires creativity, know-how and a willingness to work on anything.  Making a living is very subjective to each and every individual and situation.  But here, we live 60 miles from a mediocre town.  It's the closest one, and it's lucky to have a Wal-Mart (if you call that lucky), a Safeway, several restaurants, and several gas stations.  It's an overgrown truck stop.  Literally.


However, living off-grid by necessity, makes life wonderful, difficult, and different.  To help make our land work for us in more ways than one, our not-so-long-term plan is to have visitors to our place who would spend the night in their own bunkhouse/cottage/cabin/or canvas tent.  These accommodations would uniquely have their own solar power.  Therefore, visitors would get to experience off-grid power (with NO chance whatsoever for cheating by hooking up to the power grid since it's 17 miles away).  Visitors would also get a taste for rural living by enjoying massive amounts of raw, untouched wilderness surrounding my future orchards and gardens.


Here's my question to you.  What, if anything else, would draw people out to a remote sight, 60 miles from the nearest town, 12 miles of highway (after getting off the interstate), 17 miles of pretty well maintained dirt roads, and no fuel unless you go to the nearest gas station, 29 miles away?


I'm imagining things like cowboy cabins, rustic in style, yet plush and cozy inside.  I'm imagining lovely gardens, animals, and the wilderness.  What else can you tell me that would either be essential, or desirable to make such a trek?


We figure keeping it simple and rugged, with a healthy but simple dash of comfort, would complement the fact that we are in one of Arizona's high mountain deserts.  It is rugged, beautiful, quiet, and remote.

Our brainstorming is at an impasse.  I would love to hear what you think people would like to experience, do, or find if they came out.  Would this be an ideal situation where visitors would actually be encouraged to do nearly nothing unless they wanted to help in the garden, or go for a hike, or sit under a shade tree reading a book?

What do you think?

Can't wait to hear your thoughts!!!



Thanks to all you blog-hoppers!  And a special thanks goes to the Dandelion House and Verde Farms for making this more fun than ever!

5 comments:

  1. I'm not a birder but I understand that there is a large network of birders that would really enjoy a Bed and Breakfast type location if trails and birds are available.

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  2. I agree with "The 4 R's", birding is a big deal. Many people who are serious about it book their vacations around it. Also, many resorts in the California wine country offer bicycles for their guests to ride through the vineyards. How nice would that be?! The Grand Canyon offers mule rides, and some of my fondest trips were based around hiking. The "Green" movement is big and there are many "Green vacation packages" available to those who are into that. Your ideas fit in nicely with that concept too!

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  3. love the idea and wish I could do same(too old and infirm). I submit a caution though, you must consider liability coverage if you get to a point of following the dream. talk to a trusted agent(is there such an animal??), loves to you the azlizird.

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  4. I have been brainstorming the same ideas. We want to grow a community and I've been coming up with lists of things people would come out for. What I realized, is once all the hard work is done for others, i.e. building shelter, roads, nice outdoor places, then they will come. The trick is getting to the point where we have extra rooms, extra time, extra space. We are strapped on everything right now. I hope soon, we can rise above surviving.

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  5. Sounds like a fantastic idea...I think drawing ppl to the place will have to be done with lots of careful advertising...the blog is a good start, launching a website would be the most logical step...though make sure you find someone who knows what they are doing, a badly done website could turn off ppl...Hire someone that can make sure the site gets seen on the major search engines...Is there a tourist or visitors center at this town? or within a 100 miles, look at getting brochures made to place there or at the gas stations...there might even be sites online that you can design your own and they will print and ship them to you...also think about Postcards but with info on the back for ppl to find and visit you.

    I wish you the best of luck on this exciting adventure.

    Blessings Kelsie

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