[84chevyguyid]

Sorry, havent been on here in a while. Just breezed through your build, pretty sweet! Looks like you got the back up lights figured out.
Its been so long since I thought about trans wiring that I cant remember what I had planned for back up lights and havent touched the pickup in months. I keep having things come up with my summers, in 15 I had to take care of my dad till he passed at Thanksgiving. Summer of 16 spare time was spent rebuilding and getting my 4850 JD tractor back together. This summer was for the pickup but I got side tracked yet again. There was lots of chatter locally about the Great American Eclipse starting after the first of the year. Local hotels were/did charge anywhere from 700 to 1200 a night for rooms minimum 3 or 4 nights required, people were renting out houses to out of town visitors for thousands of dollars a night, rv parks in the area were all sold out 6 months to a year in advance so I get this stupid idea that I should rent out some of my farm ground for overnight camping for eclipse visitors. How hard should that be, right? Well after I passed the point of no return as far as reservations were concerned I found out I couldnt get any porta potties without going out of state and then there wouldnt be any service for them so I ended up building a small restroom building. You know how when you start building something and you think, O I should do this while I am at it, well that kicked in and I ended up with 2 bathrooms with flush toilets and sinks with hot and cold running water and shower(s) out the back wall, heated water with a little on demand propane water heater. Decks and framing is pressure treated wood, all stained/sealed inside, exterior is red tin with white trim and a green roof (going for the old barn look). Dug a big hole and tied two 250 gallon totes together to catch black water and let the grey water run in the hole around the tanks. Rooms are lit by solar powered led motion lights as well as yard lights and the shower area. Had to run a 400 foot water line out from my old dairy barn for water and used the old dairy manure sump pump to keep tanks emptied out during the weekend. I planted wheat criss cross in the field where the rv/campers would be so it was about 8 inches tall when everyone showed up. Planted sweet corn on one side of the field to use that weekend but it didnt get ready in time. I included a "potato bar" dinner Sunday evening with reservations as there isnt anything open here on Sundays. Did baked potatoes, chilli, cheese, ect, ect and sweet corn and a roll. Fed about 200 people Sunday and had around 350 people there by eclipse time Monday morning. Estimates are over one million visitors that came to southeast Idaho to view the eclipse. Traffic afterwards was amazing, a one hour drive home for one of my daughters took 4 hours. A 4 hour drive to Salt Lake City took 12+ hours. It was literally bumper to bumper on the interstate and on any side road you could think of for hours and hours. It was a hell of a lot of work but was pretty cool in the end, got to meet lots of really nice people with some amazing equipment. Had guests from France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Canada, and all the western United States as well as several eastern states. There was a guy from NASA that camped for the weekend and he is a presenter and did several presentations for guests, had meteors found in Idaho, moon and mars rocks, was pretty cool to see! Had a Japanese film crew that shot IMAX quality film footage for a Japanese science organization, they were using 8K cameras with computer tracking equipment, pretty cool stuff! The eclipse itself was amazing to watch, the temp dropped a good 15 degrees and we were all surprised how dark it got. First pic is of part of the campers, I had just gotten my hay off and I had them scattered all over the east half of my farm. Second pic is of the traffic trying to leave, it was seven miles from the back of traffic to the junction for the freeway.
So yeah, that was where my summer went. I got a week or so to get my haying equipment ready to go and its back to doing 3rd crop hay. Maybe in October I can get back on my pickup...