New Fire Pit

The big news of Sunday was the creation of a new fire pit in our backyard. We've been watching and reading all these ads for outdoor fireplaces. We're sure you have seen them, too. They are everywhere. Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart and all their big box competitors sell outdoor fireplaces. A "regular" fire probably wouldn't fit in one of those tiny, expensive outdoor fireplaces. Perhaps they are designed to handle Duraflame fake logs.

As you know, we greatly value the value of an outdoor fire. Late in the day, we rushed off to Lowe's and bought a piece of roofing metal and them sliced it into four two-foot pieces. Luckily, we were able to drill out matching holes for each of the pieces and, luckily, had the hardware to put it all together. We laid down a matrix of concrete blocks and then placed the windscreen atop. We attached some bale-ing wire to bridge spikes to anchor the chimney.

As luck would have it, we had a bundle of dry firewood from Almo, Idaho, down by City Of Rocks. As lack of luck would have it, we had no Boy Scout Juice (AKA: Charcoal lighter). HUM...what to do? I quickly grabbed the blow torch that we used to burn weeds and roast chiles down in Arizona. It's a danged dangerous tool, that's for sure. Use it wrong and you can get burned. Anyway, I lit the torch and blew up a fire and only lost all the hair on my left hand. That's not too bad, all things considered.

It was a good First Fire, that's for sure. We burned up the whole bundle of Almo firewood. We both loved it. There's nothing like a fire to bring our the best of an evening!

Cheers, J&S