there’s a new option for internet in town: frontier has run a fiber optic cable up the hill from the highway and is using fixed wireless for last mile connectivity, and plans are only $49.99/month

starlink is also available here now, and it’s nearly twice as fast as frontier (75-100Mbps), but it costs twice as much and you have to buy a $599 dish

still, progress is progress, no matter how small

our long-planned Telegram group chat is finally online.

click here to join.

what will the chat group be used for? i’m glad you asked!

you can:

• get to know our founder and resident weirdo, Cameron
• find out what’s going on out at Camp Liberty
• learn about opportunities to visit and/or move in
• find out about ongoing and future construction projects

the bighorn sheep is native to the colorado river basin, and you can go and see the majestic animals at two nearby locations:

• Willow Beach, an arm of the Colorado River, which is 30 minutes away from Camp Liberty

and

• Bighorn Park in Boulder City, Nevada, which is 40 minutes away from Camp Liberty

At Willow Beach, the best idea is to kayak northbound on the river and look for bighorns that congregate along the western shore and on the rocky hillside above. You might have to explore the area for a few hours in order to guarantee a bighorn sighting. If you have a set of binoculars, you can see bighorns on the west side of the river from the comfort of the Willow Beach parking lot on the eastern side, no kayak needed.

At Bighorn Park in Boulder City, you’ll generally find at least a dozen sheep grazing during daylight hours, so going here is the best place to go in order to guarantee a bighorn sighting.

built out of a 4×4 pressure-treated wooden post set in concrete, which was then covered with cuttings of pallet wood (pine, perhaps?) and finished with wood stain and a few coats of polyurethane for UV resistance (the sun is quite strong in the Mojave Desert!)

these panels represent a 30X increase in the size of our solar installation, and will power a large 48-volt lithium-ion home battery that will be installed in fall 2022

for now, we’ll use one of these 230-watt panels to charge up our 700Wh 48-volt electric bicycle battery, which powers an accompanying 120V AC inverter

5kW of solar panels can easily power an entire home, so this addition is a major step forward for the project

please welcome our newest addition to Camp Liberty, a 2nd-Generation Chevy Volt

though not as exciting as a Tesla, she’ll still cart you into town using 100% solar-derived electric power, and she can tap her ample reserves (a gas-powered range extender) to take you another 400 miles if you so desire

prior to today’s date, one was forced to drive 3 miles down the hill toward the highway in order to get good wireless service on T-Mobile

as of today, Camp Liberty has switched to Verizon and consequently there is internet and voice service right here on our property as well as wifi

speeds vary quite a bit, but at peak times, they’re generally 1MB/sec up/down, and at off-peak times, up to 8MB/sec up and 2.5MB/sec down

zoom calls and other video chats are now possible!

to some people, speeds like this might seem pathetically slow, but we here at Camp Liberty are happy to see such a massive improvement in our internet

baby steps

the Colorado River famously carved out the Grand Canyon

Camp Liberty is just 20 miles from the mighty Colorado

take a look at this extraordinary vista

the little blue thing served as my office for the afternoon, and a helpful respite from the sun

the medium-term goal is to buy a Tesla Model X to serve as a convenient and eco-friendly way for residents of Camp Liberty to head into Las Vegas for supplies, dining, and/or entertainment

since our current solar power setup is a bit weak at the moment, it’d be nice to have a supercharger nearby

luckily, Tesla was listening, so they recently installed an array of Superchargers at the brand new Shell gas station here in White Hills! these are the newer V3 Superchargers, which offer charging speeds up to 250kW. the charging station also has its own small dog park, and there is a convenience store, a Subway restaurant, and nice clean restrooms inside

it may seem silly to celebrate the installation of a handful of EV chargers, but out here in the open desert, such novelties are actually quite a rarity, so we’ll happily clink our glasses!

the stargazing out at Camp Liberty simply cannot be beat