What person doesn’t enjoy a road trip? Pack your bags, map out the back roads, and adventure awaits!

Well, it has come time for the crazy Bradbury Bunch to embark on a road trip to the wooded forest area of East Texas to handpick some more wood for the house. Not the average road trip!

Bright and early Wednesday we loaded up our overnight bags, both dogs, necessary stuffed animals (what would a trip be without at least 2 huge stuffed pets per child?), waffles in bellies, and hooked up the trailer.

Off we went! The stereo was playing Toby Keith’s “whisky for my men, beer for my horses,” the girls were shouting seemingly random numbers while scrambling to look out every window (apparently a car game… counting how many cars of a certain selected color they could find, and the first one to reach 50 wins), the dogs were whining in the back because they were sharing the space with our bags and each other, and there was a pan of scratch brownies and Red Velvet Whoopie pies for our logger and his wife (compliments of our resident baker, Reiley) taunting me in the front window. Yep! All ready for a 4 hour drive! Livingston, Texas, the Bradburys are coming!

You’re going to have to use your imagination to visualize the desserts under the plastic…

Finally reaching our destination, I was in awe of what we saw. Our logger, Billy, (I still can’t grasp the concept the we “have a logger”) showed us the 40-foot logs that he already has waiting to go to our house this weekend.

Can you see tall Steve over to the left, to get a size perspective?

Then he showed us the Cedar logs that he had cut, and wondered if we wanted one of them for the “ridge pole”…. the huge log that runs down the center ridge of the peaked ceiling, holding our roof up. It will be seen as a feature of the house from the inside, when you look up, so he thought Cedar might be really pretty, rather than plain Pine. Here are the enormous Cedars he had…

Billy and Steve are standing at the opposite end of these logs… not far away from them.

In those two pictures, look at Steve compared to the logs.  wow

here is a pic of the girls sitting on them. look at the diameter of the logs compared to the girls!

Then Billy showed us his sawmill, and sliced a board off a Walnut log. He said he had more Walnut, if we wanted any for the house. Hmmmm. Definitely something to consider!

Then he showed us the log he’d cut our counters from…

It’s almost as wide as Reese is tall!

We left to find a hotel, and planned to return to the woods the next morning. We had more selecting to do!

Early the next morning we went back out. Billy had gotten that giant Walnut log that was in the picture with Reese and put it on his mill. He sliced slabs off of it, to see if we wanted any to use. We LOVED it! We took it all! We are going to use the slabs for bathroom countertops and the kitchen island countertop. The bottom of the log upside down for the mantle! I am soooo excited!!!

Here is a picture of the Cedar ridge pole we picked, that holds up the roof and extends across the whole house inside. It’s the log in the front, closest to me. The biggest end is 3 feet diameter!

It was freezing. The burning Cedar campfire smelled so good.

Billy’s dog, Jessy, kept us company and was sooo sweet.

It was a great trip!  We’re expecting the logs any day now. They were supposed to arrive last Sunday, but Billy wanted to put a few more logs on the truck before sending it.   Steve and I need to get home and start building the concrete foundation piers. We have about 25 to make.

On the way home from Livingston, we had to take a tour. Pull my arm. Blue Bell Creamery. We toured the factory learning how they make all the different flavors. At the end you have your choice of 31 flavors, for free. After that its a dollar a scoop. I got chocolate covered cherry. SO good. Steve is a pig. He got 2. Christmas Cookies and Cinnamon. What a great way to end a wonderful roadrip.

The next post is “It’s Time To Strip!” (uh-oh…I guess you’d better cover your eyes?)…

Or, if you’re just stumbling on to this post, click on “What do Vegas and logs have in common”? to see the very beginning of our log home building process.  Or, click on “What is Cottonwood Creek?” to see what this whole blog is about.   Or, click on “Welcome to Cottonwood Creek” to go the very beginning of this chronological story, and when we first bought this land, and build a 130-year old Bed and Breakfast on the property that YOU might stay in some day.