This past weekend I was finally able to start working on my property.

On Saturday I went to Home Depot. Bought (3) 12' pressure treated 4x6's and (13) 8' 2x6's. For an extra $2 I had them cut the 2x6's in half to make the planks. I also bought (12) pieces of 2' 1/2" rebar and (6) 60 bags of quick crete loaded it up into the beater truck and took it home.

To save from double handling, my plan was to build the foot bridge on my truck. I spaced of the 4x6's on my contractors rack. Although not perfectly level, it worked. I used my air framer to fasten the planks. In less than 2 hours I was able to put together the wood bridge. Loaded on my truck ready to go. There was a yard sale going on across the alley that morning. So I probably looked kind of funny sitting on a wood deck onto of a pickup truck. but my neighbors know I am weird.

The plan was to drive the truck out. Then back it up to where the land drops off to be a drainage gully. Then use gravity to slide the bridge down like a sled. Low tech, but it worked. The bridge weighed over 400lbs easily. We used a 2x4 as a lever to move the bridge into place.



The bridge stratles the drainage gully. What we did is dig out a small trench on both banks. Then I put in 60lb concrete bags underneath each 4x6 where it toughed the bank. I did not open the bags, nor did I mix them. My plan was to use them like form fitting pads.

The bridge had 1/2" holes pre drilled in them. So through each concrete pad, two 1/2" rebar rods 24" long were hammered through. What this pounding did is cause the concrete mix to adjust to the contour of both the soil undrneath it and the shape of the 4x6. The plan is that the block will harden on its own over time.

The reason I did this is because the bridge maybe temporary. I needed a way to make it reasonably secure. So I could get a wheelbarrow across the gulley. Until the bridge that would have been nearly impossible. What I have found is that wood lasts the longest if its kept away from the ground. Wood to earth contact is a recipe for rot and termites.

Eventually I have to construct some type of ramps on both sides to make it easier to get light wheeled equipment over it.

After putting in the bridge, we started working on cutting a trail into the woods.



I am going to guestimate that we were able to cut about 100 yards of trail. There are a few areas which are kind of like clearings. To the sense that there is not much vegetation taller than 6'. It is in a few of these that I hope to put in some campsites.

There are extremely thick belts of vegetation in the wooded area. The tunnel like picture its through a patch of tall cedar trees. After cutting though these I started to get a major allergy attack. After this post I plan to do a separate thread on this subject. So it looks like I will have a small source of cedar wood in the future.

The trail itself is cleared of trees and vines. Then I ran a wheeled stringline trimmer over it. Basically its a 6.5hp weedwacker which works pretty good as a poor mans brushhog

The question I have now is whether I am going to surface the trail or not. I have been thinking about getting a dumptruck or two of gravel brought out to the site. I would have a pile dumped near the parking area shown in the first picture.

What I would do with the gravel is wheel barrow it out to place on the trail. Hand rake it out. Then get a gas-powered tamper to beat it into the earth. Also, I would frame in some simple squares and rectangles with landscape timbers. Put gravel into these as tent pads.

Then, whatever is left over of the pile would be spread out to make a basic parking and materials staging area.

Wow, it looks like you've got some nice woods there, Thed. That will make a very cool camping spot!


I could see surfacing some trails, just to keep from getting sloppy and muddy when it rains. Although, having gravel (compacted decomposed granite) sidewalks around my house, I have to admit it makes more of a mess than I like. If the ground is wet and your boots get muddy, then you walk on the gravel paths, the gravel will stick to the mud on your boots, and you'll be dragging it everywhere. It will end up in your truck, your tent, etc.

I'm considering getting rid of my gravel sidewalks and just putting in some stepping stones. Either store-bought ones, or ones that I form and pour myself. It's a piece of cake to nail together a small form and pour in some sackcrete to make stepping stones, then lay them out roughly on a path. They will stay put, and won't cling to your boots.

Even my driveway is "gravel", which is really nothing more than fairly large rocks dug up from the back of my property and compacted into a pad where we park our vehicles. And over time as the rain washes away the fill between them, the rocks stick to my boots when they're muddy. I'm talking even larger rocks like the size of golf balls.

I'll never put in another gravel sidewalk or driveway. They're more trouble than they're worth. Large crushed stone might be OK, like they use for construction site driveways. But nothing smaller than fist-sized chunks, or it will be a mess. Large crushed rock is good for drives, especially if you're in a truck. But I wouldn't use it for walkways. It's hard on the ankles.

As for tent pads, I wouldn't use gravel either. Man, that's gotta be uncomfortable, pitching a tent over gravel. I'd much prefer to pitch a tent over a bed of leaves. Even wet ones. If I were determined to build a raised bed for a tent pad, I'd fill it with sand. It will be much more comfortable to stand in or lay in. And the raised sand bed will drain water well enough.

Just my 2 cents. You've got some nice property there.

I've hauled a lot of gravel in a wheelbarrow. It is a bitch and takes forever. The results tend to be unsatifactory as the gravel compresses differently into different soils and moisture levels. As Tobus says, it also gets every where. I'd stay away from it if you can.

Mulch.

I know what you mean about the mud and gravel on the boots.

The major issue I will be fighting on that property is water. Both a blessing and a curse. The soil out there is none to get super muddy. As the whole county is a big huge blob of black loam on limestone.

Gravel is not the best thing. But its an inexpensive improvement which is better than nothing. But it only really works if you can stay on the gravel all the time. Once you get mud on your feet, your soles turn to aggregate magnets.

The step stone thing is a great idea for shorter paths. In the past I have used flexible plastic handscape edging. I made an amoeba like shape out of it and filled them with concrete. Each one being about 240lbs of bagged mix. comes out great but is too much work at this time.


One idea I was thinking of was to get bags of portland cement. Then have the gravel and sand delivered to the site by dumptruck. Then wheelbarrowing these out and spreding them on the path 3" of sand and gravel. Then I would down a layer of portland cement ontop. Then use a gas powered roto tiller and turning it in all together with the soil. Spray on some water Then power tamp it down.

Obviously this mixture with water would not be super strong. But I was thinking it could be enough to have a hard walking surface.

There are a few facotrs which make doing whellbarrow work effective. They are focusing on the quality of the path traversed by the wheelbarrow. The quality of the wheelbarrow itself, and most importantly making sure the barrow is not overloaded. Many people overload what they take which makes it hard. Fill it to the top then teeter-totter it along till you reach the dumping spot.

Barrow work is not that bad if you are paced and do not try to get macho in moving too much.

Still this is not discounting what you have said DRman. Good results are hard to achieve. The thing is I have a soil with no aggregate in it at all. Its loam. So by compressing some into the surface I have have some sort of wet weather path. Gravel in a rain is better than what I have now.



I have considered that. I own a wood chipper, so making it on site is easy. My issue is that I need to make a harder surface to move material across. One which can be used after a rain. Mulch would work well im making a soft path and supressing growth in the trail. But it would not help the mositure issues I need to address.

On the subject of wheelbarrows... whoever invented the one-wheeled wheelbarrow ought to be punched directly in the mouth. I hate 'em. Especially the way they have that bumper sticking in front of the front wheel so you can dump it. That bumper is usually so low to the ground that it catches on everything, including a slight grade. Whenever it catches, your one-wheeled load goes careening to one side and dumps itself where you don't want it to.

Man, I hate them.

My wife and I use a wheelbarrow every single day of our lives, for mucking horse stalls and transporting horse manure from the barn to the manure pile. Either at our own place (3 stalls) or next door, where there are 18 stalls worth of manure to be carted. That's about 300 to 500 pounds of manure a day. So I'd say we have more hands-on wheelbarrow experience than most.

And the wheelbarrow we prefer BY FAR is a two-wheeled Rubbermaid wheelbarrow. It has wheels the size of bicycle tires and a straight handle across the back. It's easy to use, there's no balancing required, and it will hold a hell of a lot more than a regular one-wheeled wheelbarrow. It's shaped for easy dumping without the need of a stopper/bumper on the front, too. It is fiberglass, so it's lightweight. But it is expensive at about $100. I just wouldn't use anything else, especially over rough terrain.

I used ours for carting around stones when I was building the wall for the barn, too. And it handles them well. But you're right: the trick is using small loads. But I'd easily say I could do twice the work with this Rubbermaid wheelbarrow and go twice as long as opposed to a regular traditional type. Man, I hate them.

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of forming them at home and pouring them at your leisure, then simply driving them out to the site and plopping them down where you want them. Kind of like your idea about the concrete fence posts. You just build yourself several forms and do X number of them per day.

240 pounds per stepping stone sounds excessive. I can make 2 or 3 good sized stepping stones from each individual 80-pound bag of sackcrete. These will be about a foot square, or maybe 18" square. Enough for a large place to put your foot on a path. But of course, they'd be staggered along the path, not butted together. So it would get fairly expensive if you had to make a solid path for wheeled equipment. If it were just a foot path, I'd go with the stepping stones spaced at a normal walking stride.

the 240 pound stones are a bit monolithic

I did a patio and walkway at my sisters house with them. I poured a bunch of amoebas which had about 6-8" spacing in between them. Filled the negative space with gravel. Whats cool is you can do them pretty fast.

The small step stones could be great on a small scale. The thing is, I need to create some type of system which is good on a large scale.

Thats why I am considering power tamping moist gravel with portland cement. I've read somewhere that you can get pretty good results spreading portland cement on the gravel at (1) 80lb bag per 4x50' trail. Its supposed to lock together enough to be a hard light duty surface.

Any thoughts on that?

I've seen that done before, Thed, in various ways. And it does seem to work well. Mixing portland cement with enough sand so that it doesn't fully harden, but just makes a stiff mix. It would definitely improve the cohesion of your gravel, and perhaps help prevent it from being picked up by muddy boots later.

The only caveat I'd extend is to make sure you wet it down after laying it so the cement starts to cure while the weather is good. Relying on rain to wet it for you could prove to be disastrous. A heavy rain, of course, would wash it all away before it has the chance to cure.

I'm not sure how much coverage you can get from an 80 pound sack, but 200 square feet sure sounds like a lot. You'd barely get a light dusting over your gravel, which wouldn't do much good. I'd be interested to see your results, though, if you try it!

Can you get a crushed stone/stone dust mix where you are. It spreads out kind of messy but as it gets rained on and tamped down the dust filters down and creates an almost cement base for the gravel. For those of us too cheap to pave up here it's the driveway of choice. It makes a stable, porous, fairly attractive crushed stone look without the stones lying loose to be kicked up. You need to refresh it every few years due to frost heaves and sinkage in our area.

That gravel mix that DRMan was talking about we call roadbase. Regular gravel up here just slowly goes away--sucked into the mud, and never seen again. That roadbase gravel tends to stay around a lot longer.

You know, we had to shred the hell out of a couple of acres of scrub (up here, scrub pines can get to be about forty feet or so), and we spread the wood chips out over about a 100' area...Not only did it provide a great walking/wheelbarrow surface (we used a cart like Tobus described), it prevented weeds for almost five years. Approximately 1"-2" thick wood chips, mostly pine, manzanita, and buckbrush. That mulch idea may not be too bad, 'specially if'n you have a chipper already...and you can take the chipper out to where you're working, eh?

We used regular gravel to 'maintain' our dirt road for years--it just got sucked into the mud too quickly. Finally ended up spending $3000 on roadbase, and trying it out to see how well it would work. Worked fine, but $3000 turns out, doesn't buy a whole lot of road...but that section kicks ASS!

Wow, we must have a hell of a lot more quarries than you do. I pay $100 for 6 cubic yards delivered of crushed stone and stone dust. Course the quarry is only 3 miles away.

Wow!

I paid $76 for 1 cubic yard--11 years ago!


We have more illegal immigrants than you, so don't get all fancy-pants on me.

I pay about 200 -250 for a 12 yard dump spread on my road, depending upon what I get. I actually don't like the crushed stuff. I like big drain rock if I can get it. The big rounded stoned mash into the mud and make a fine pavement over time.
The forest service calls this kind of road an "armored surface." With no proper road base, it can't hold up to heavy traffic, especially in wet weather, but it beats the heck out of a mud road.

Today Animator, Chris, and I was able to complete building a trail to the southeast corner of my property. There is a small clearing there which is mowable. I was thinking about building a cabin in that area. But now I am leaning more and more into building cabins in the woods.

Thank you guys for you work today.

It was pretty humid today. For the past month there have been alot of scattered thunder and rain showers in Northeast Texas. This had the humdity up pretty high. Combine this with a little bit of wind and the Sun... it can get a bit tough. Plus long sleeves and gloves for dealing with poison ivy and poison oak.



Right now, access is pretty well concealed from the road. To enter the property, one drives east from the road on the northern noundary of the property. This looks like its a road to service the farmers fields to the north side. Well.. it is really. The farmer has been using it to access his property. My plan is to keep using it. Then, well away from the paved road, you cut due south to the trailhead.



With the use of loppers, bow saws, and my poor mans brush hog we continued cutting a trail. With three people the trail work went very fast. Up until we reached a long and well established belt of poison ivy. Then it slowed down a bit. Still we were able to cut through it to reach the small field in the southeast corner of the land.

In the poison ivy thicket, we pushed the trail past a bent over tree with scores of butterflies on them. It was odd, maybe they we mating or something. I do not know. What was cool is when you shook the tree, all the butterfies would go flying. Landing all over. As well on us working on the trail.

I looked at some butterfly websites to try and identify them. No luck so far. It would be cool if those woods were a regular butterfly habitat. Its really neat when you are in the center of a huge swarm of them.



On two Sundays my first objective was accomplished. Build a path for quick and easy access to the the southeast corner.

Now there are a few other tasks I am interested in doing. These depend alot on funds and how much volunteer labor I can muster.

• Build second bridge across main creekbed
• Auger and place posts every 25' along trail
• Place gravel and tamp path
• Build firepit and campsite
• Build cabin

At this time I am seriously considering putting up my basic starter cabins in the wooded area. Mostly because I could do it in a way where no-one would know they are there. Unless perhaps I have neighbors somewhere who are spying somehow.

All of the construction pretty much has to be pier & beam. Because of this, I really do not have any major restrictions keeping me from building a cabini 2' off the ground as opposed to 8' in the air. So, I may end up going for some type of cabin like I discussed in the flood plain property post awhile back.

What it would be is a cabin on stilts above many of the lower trees and bushes in the wooded section. Most likely it would be a steel superstructure with wood decking and hardiboard walls. Ideally it would be painted in woodland tones and colors where it would blend with the surroundings.