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Progress report/Podcast Interview

Dan, Inn Town Campground, Feb 2015Hello campers!  This month’s blog update includes a great interview about our project, some behind-the-scenes construction updates, and a glimpse into the future.

I keep saying we’re busy working on the Inn Town Campground and, while I’d love to show photos of the brain storming sessions with the engineers, city officials and foresters, the reality is I don’t have any photos of those meetings.  However, I’m excited to say that we were interviewed on the RV Family Travel Atlas podcast this week about the campground; scroll down for more details on that fun update.

I recently put a poll on our Facebook page to see what people are interested in learning more about: “construction process, past travels, or what the campground will be like when it’s finished” and the resounding answer was “yes”…to all three!  So for those “yes” folks, I’ve got a little of everything in this month’s post.

LABRADOR

So what is the building process like so far?

Building a campground from the ground up is a huge undertaking – much larger than we ever anticipated.  Not only are we engineering the lay out of the campsites, putting in power, water and sewer, designing and building a 3000 square foot communal building, we’re also building roads! None of those things happen quickly or without a lot of help.  We have a lot of meetings to discuss various building and development codes, along with sessions figuring out how to make a hilly campground suitable for RVs and tents.  After all, how are we supposed to know what the voltage drop in a 220v circuit is over 200 feet?  Along with sewer, electric, water and many other things, we also have a forest to manage.  The site is covered with over 2000 trees, many of them large, beautiful ponderosa pines.  Much of our development design work has been focused on building a use-friendly facility that also compliments the beautiful forest.  What trees do we want to keep?  Which ones need to be removed for the roads and buildings?  Those questions (and thousands more) are what we have been thinking about during the construction process.

Once again, we can’t imagine doing any of this without help from a whole team of professionals.  So let’s have a quick shout-out to the team of people we’ve used so far in the process: Sierra Land Solutions, Native Son Designs, Melas Engineering, Del Valle Consulting, Gray Electric, All Phase Heating & Air, MK & Sons Construction, Randall Frizzell, Hutcinhson Enterprises,  Holdrege & Kull, Genesis Society, Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, Nevada County Historical Society, Salix ConsultingPine Creek Veterinary, and a an especially big shout out to the amazing crew at the City of Nevada City for their countless hours of feedback.  Each of these organizations has helped our project move forward and we appreciate their wisdom and professional insight.  The preparation for the infrastruture is thorough, complicated and long, but much of that is now done and we hope construction will start in May 2015.

One of the interesting side-bars of building a campground is that it doesn’t happen very often in a community.  Usually construction involves subdivisions, homes and office / retail centers.  But campgrounds?   Not so much.  That means we’ve spent a lot of time reading, listening, thinking and daydreaming about what a great campground will include.  I am a total sucker for Instagram and have really enjoyed following and interacting with other camping-loving people on that social media platform.  As a result of a photo I posted from a past trip, the super friendly RV Family Travel Atlas folks encouraged us to listen to their podcast “8 tips for Campground owners”, which was full of great ideas RV Family Travel Atlasand insights.  In fact, this week we helped kick-off their series of interviews with campground owners.  In the interview, we talk about a little of everything like: how to configure a road for a 40 foot RV, how much water a campground needs,  our personal favorite campground and Dan’s best (worst?) epic-fail with an RV.  You can listen to RV Family Travel Atlas podcast on their website, our interview is at 57:00 or subscribe to them via iTunes.

My show notes would include:

What I loved about chatting with Jeremy and Stephanie of RV Family Travel Atlas was that they share our vision for a family-friendly campground.  I’ve already received several calls at the Outside Inn from people wanting to book campsites for their family reunions; I’m so excited that our customers for the Inn Town Campground are tracking us down, even a year plus before we’re ready to host them.  Building a campground is a lot of work, but we’re thrilled that there are folks, near and far, that are cheering us along.

What will all of this work look like when the campground is done?

Here are some more fun photos from last year’s staged photo shoot, showcasing some of the different types of future camping options.  The photo shoot was designed to give people a visual cue to what the Inn Town Campground will be like when it’s finished.  We will have a whole range of family-friendly camping options, from the lush glamping tents to the traditional rustic campsites where your own tent can be your castle for the weekend.  And for those of you with RVs…or maybe a vintage trailer; yep, we’ll have a spot for them too!   Phew! is it the summer of 2016 yet?

Inn Town Campground, Nevada City

For those of you who missed my update on Facebook and Instagram about our new custom patches, click here for the interview we did with The Studio, who produced our patches.  Finally, I decided it was time to branch out from the Outside Inn’s Twitter feed so I launched the Inn Town Campground’s own Twitter feed.  Dan and I are excited to share this process with folks, feel free to post a comment if you have any specific questions about where we’re at or where we’re going.

–Erin

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