The north side of the Olympic Peninsula near Sequim (pronounce: skwim) is the area where we hope to find our BOL. We’ve spent considerable time determining what we wanted in a BOL community before deciding on Sequim. Our goal was to find something in a rural area near a small town, with a temperate climate, that was less than three hours from our current home; a location that didn’t require us to drive through the mountains, a major metropolis, or cross a bridge to get there. We really like the resources and feeling of Sequim; now we just need to find that right piece of property.
That part is much easier said than done. We’ve been tracking available properties online for several months. We had even gone to look at a few, but hadn’t found anything that interested us. Recently I’ve been watching one online that looked promising. We researched it further and agreed it’d be worth looking at. Since Sarah had an extra couple days off we decided to head out to Sequim and look at BOL property. We spent time looking at it and walking around the acreage, and we both really liked it. The property itself is great; the structures will need some work – but it had location, location, location. I’ll keep you posted if anything comes of it.
On the way back from Sequim we stopped in Vashon Island to pick up the newest addition to our family: a seven week old female Border Collie, named Kate. We had been in contact with the breeder for several weeks and were just waiting for her to get old enough so that we could go get her and bring her home. She is a cute little thing; as Emily says, she’s “freaking adorable.” Is a dog a prepper topic? Of course it is! Not only does a dog add to the home security with it’s heightened senses and awareness, it also adds comfort and a sense of normalcy in a stressful situation. Remember, you dog needs to be included in planning your preps: storing extra dog food, and including it in your evacuation plan.
Since we needed dog food for Kate, we made our monthly trip to Costco early. (Early in the sense that their monthly coupons weren’t available for another week.) They had a good price on Duracell Daylite LED D cell flashlights, so we picked up a couple of those. We have several flashlights, but they are already distributed throughout the house; we wanted to get a couple of quality ones to put in a central location. We bough puppy food 
(including plenty of extra), the Kirkland brand has good ingredients at a good price. We got some extra peanut butter and plan to get more before peanut butter prices go up soon – ounce for ounce peanut butter is one of the cheapest sources of protein available. Also wool socks were on sale so we got a few extra to add to our BOBs.
What did you do?
(Monday: One Man’s Tool)
(10/16/11)
Example: An apartment in a large city vs. a house in a rural community when an 8.5 earthquake strikes. City: gas, water, and electric lines break, fires start, water pressure drops, buildings partially collapse, debris falls, power is out, traffic gridlocks, the dense population panics. Rural: things fall off shelves, maybe the power goes out and you have to use your generator for a few days.