A SERENE ESCAPE MILES FROM ANYWHERE

Our driver Chris was somewhere south of Grand Forks, in the middle of an endless forest, when he started losing traction.

The summer was wet, and he was on a slick forest service road that gained 1800 feet of elevation from the highway to the knoll where he was scheduled to deliver a Holo. Around him, spruce trees created a barricade of shade, stopping the sun from drying out the road.

And then, all forward movement stopped as his tires flung mud everywhere. 

Already in four-wheel drive, in low range with the differentials locked, he was well and truly stuck. 

The driver of the pilot car in front got out, grabbed a recovery strap and hooked his truck to ours. Then got back into his truck and hit the gas, spinning all eight tires and heading nowhere.

Escaping the ordinary

One of the wonders of the PNW is that you don’t have to go far before the modern world, with its constant demands and space constraints, disappears and you find yourself amidst mountains, trees and the freedom to endlessly roam.

Avid outdoors people, Kyle and Rachel wanted their own slice of solitude. So, a year before our difficult delivery, he went looking for a piece of property to share with Rachel and their dogs. 

“We love hiking and trail running and stuff like that,” Kyle said. “We've got dogs so we like to be out hiking with them and have everyone be off leash and all of that.”

He found the perfect slice of serenity 20 minutes south of the Canadian border, just off a secondary highway, then down a few miles of forest service roads and gravel, that matched their needs perfectly and bought it. 

There was no road in, no utilities, and no neighbors – just the way they wanted it.

The best part was if you hiked in for another 20 minutes up a steep hill, there was a small meadow that offered panoramic views of the surrounding forest. Cut off from the modern world, the only sounds were the wind in the trees and the birds chattering.

That’s where Kyle and Rachel wanted to create their haven.

The trouble of on-site construction

But the same thing that drew them to the property, its isolation from the world, created a major challenge. 

“We had a pretty challenging place,” Kyle said. “We wanted to put the cabin up on top of a bluff.” 

“Building up there would have been a lot more work than we wanted to put into it to build it.”

Add in the rural area, which would have added complexity to the build, and required a long commute for any contractor, and building a cabin was off the table before it was even considered.

Easier with prefab

Instead of looking for contractors, the couple started looking for prefab construction companies.

Very quickly, they found DROP Structures and stopped looking for anything else.

“A Drop Structure was really the only choice,” Kyle said. “It's the best thing out there.”

So they made the call. 

After a little back and forth, Kyle got busy with life, and sourcing a cabin for his property hit the back-burner until he got a call. There was a Holo at DROP Structure’s HQ already built and waiting for an owner, so he snapped it up, requesting only the addition of a Grizzly Wood Stove to make sure it stayed cozy through the winter.

But, there was still no road to the bluff where the Cabin was supposed to go. He still had to get one constructed, so the building sat for six months as the road, and the Sono tube foundation for the cabin was built.

Then Kyle put the delivery off again because incessant spring rains made the forest service roads a muddy mess. But the wet spring turned into a wet summer, and the shade of all those trees meant the road never truly dried out.

In June, itching to get their structure in place, Kyle and Rachel made the call to get it delivered to their sanctuary.

And that’s when we got stuck.

Inching our way forward

With the pilot vehicle and our truck both spinning their tires, unable to make any headway, the delivery looked bleak.

Luckily, Kyle was prepared for the conditions. 

He grabbed a recovery strap from his four-wheel drive van and hooked it up to the pilot truck, creating a train of vehicles on the slick, muddy slope.

This time when everyone hit the gas, we crept forward together up the last spur where the Holo would rest for the night before getting placed the next morning.

“The delivery, it could have been high-stress and tough,” Kyle said. “But Chris’s attitude was so good. He was so patient and easy to deal with. He was going to take as much time as needed and he was going to do what needed to be done. So, it turned out to be a great experience, the day of delivery.”

A hard-won off-grid escape

After that, the delivery was straightforward. The Holo was placed on its Sono tube foundation and we left it for Kyle and Rachel to finish off the decorating and installing their off-grid system. 

While not entirely finished, Kyle and Rachel have been enjoying their space through late summer and into autumn, spending weekends with the dogs roaming the forest and running through forest paths without meeting a single soul.

And, when the fun is over and the sun is going down, they can light a fire and wait for the constellations to reveal themselves one star at a time, before heading to bed.

“It's nice to have a place where you've got a bed and all that, but you don’t have all the comforts of home,” Kyle said. “I like that it's a little bit rougher.”