Earlier this month, as I was driving home from Bluff, Utah, my earthship fantasy finally came together for me. You see, I’ve been thinking for a few years how it would be nice to have a 2nd home in the southwest somewhere. It would be out in the middle of nowhere. I’d design and build this home to use solar power (photovoltaic for electricity needs and passive solar for heating), a well, a cistern, septic system, and it would be largely underground for insulation purposes. I originally started down this path a few years ago when my parents updated their will. In doing so, they decided to give me partial ownership of a small piece of property south of Albuquerque, to make some legal issue with the will simpler.
But I visited that land when Beth and I took a road trip through New Mexico and Utah 2 or 3 years ago, and it’s not very scenic. Well, I think I found the place I’d rather build this custom home – somewhere in the vicinity around Monticello, Utah or maybe as far south as Blanding. I’ve always thought the drive between Bluff and Moab was pretty, though Beth disagrees. But driving through there back and forth for the San Juan river trip, I think that would be the place to build my “getaway” home.
As part of this fantasy, I imagined also owning a small airplane so I could fly to and from the area more regularly, without having to drive 9 hours each way. If I learned mountain flying, I could also visit my parents this way, since there’s a landing strip not too far from their house. Well, yesterday I went to the annual Rocky Mountain Fly-In of the Experimental Aircraft Association in Longmont. I walked around and looked at all the cool airplanes on display and watched most of the aerobatics airshow they put on. Walking through the field of planes, I found there are several aircraft in the experimental category that seem like they’d be suitable for vacation flying. The cost would be low, compared to buying a regular general aviation plane. But it would require a lot of time investment, too – between 500 and 1000 hours of build time. A couple models I liked there were the Sonex (for the price) and the Velocity (for the speed and looks).