Memorial Weekend Saturday

We sure can tell it's a holiday weekend. The area was pretty quiet since we got here in early May, but now it's hopping. Unfortunately the weather is not smiling down on all the tourists. It is a drizzly dank morning and is supposed to be this way today and tomorrow. Monday is forecast to be a beautiful sunny day in the mid seventies. Just in time to see all the lovely fudgies heading back south to work!

Work on our new digs came to a halt for he holiday weekend although the basement was waterproofed on Friday so that it can eventually be back filled. Our builder said he will come in after the holiday weekend to start framing. Then we should start seeing some real progress.

Tom and Evey came up to Goodfallows last night and we plan to spend time with them today and tomorrow before we head down to South Haven to pick David up and bring him back north with us.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend and we wish we could visit with you all. Hope to see everyone soon!!

A Rainy Wednesday Evening

Today started out beautifully after a night in the thirties. The sun shone brightly, and the workers started coming at about 7:45 to begin their work day. First the masons and then the well drillers. By the end of the afternoon it started to rain, but by this time the well was in and the block was finished, re-inforced and all of the equipment packed up and gone!

The work crews here are amazing. They are all hard workers and take such pride in what they do. You never see anyone leaning on a shovel. They are always in motion and it gives us a good feeling that we are helping local workers make a living.

Here are some pictures from the day...

The well drillers needed a hand leveling their truck, so I pitched in.

Once we had it level they went to work. The well went down 230 feet. They finished putting in the casing by the end of the day and moved all of their equipment to the next well project in Lake Leelanau.

Here is the finished well and the finished basement. (Well, it's not a finished basement, but its a done basement).

Here's another view.

And another. Now all we need is a house on that puppy!

Basement Block on Monday

We watched the block go up in the basement yesterday. They finished about half of the walls. Today they are back at it bright and early and the well driller also started this morning.

It's so great to see a lot of progress being made!

The masons arrived on Monday morning and had to sweep about two inches of water off of the basement floor before they could start working. Then the trucks came with their loads of cement blocks.

This was after one day's work! There was a crew of ten working on erecting the block walls.

Driftwood along Lake Michigan beach. The zebra mussels are piled up six inches deep in places!

The Basement Is Growing on Wheeler Road

I apologize about the infrequent posts as of late. We have a roaming signal at the property and I can't rack up roaming charges.

The contractors have been making steady progress on the building site. The basement floor was poured on Friday and the masons began building the basement walls this morning. Everything looks great and we are happy to see everyone taking such pride in their work. Nancy and I have been cleaning up dead wood and burning every night. We hope to have the lot partly cleaned up before we get too busy with our part of the construction.

We have had decent weather since mid week last week, but some rain and storms at night. (Night is good for those sort of things). We hope it dries up down  state so Mike can start his garage.

We are anxious to see David on Sunday and look forward to showing him around the area. We are finding a lot of beautiful sites up here to share with everyone.

Pouring the basement floor on Friday.

I didn't say we had a finished basement, I said they finished the basement floor! Today they finished more than half of the basement walls. Pictures to follow.

We found Deer Lake on one of our bike rides. (South of Empire).

Happy Wednesday from Wheeler Road

We have been working around the property and exploring the area for the past couple of days. The weather has been really nice with temps around sixty and ample sunshine. We had our first social visitors on Monday when Bill and Rose Olsen stopped by to see our progress. They wanted to see if they could find the property and then went to find a local restaurant for lunch. We also met another of our neighbors when Terry Ebrecht stopped by on a walk down the road. Nancy also met Joe Romberger who lives next door to the north of us.

Today we went hiking along the shore of Lake Michigan at the bottom of Pyramid Point and past to the shore below Camp Onieda. We found about a dozen Petoskey stones of varying sizes and marveled at the beauty of this coastline. This is starting to be one of my favorite walks in this area.

Our internet signal is coming in on a roaming network connection so I have to be careful not to overrun my roaming allowance or internet connectivity gets very expensive. I will post pictures when we have a better connection while out and about.

Construction of the house is moving along but at a slow pace right now. The masons are ready to pour the concrete floor in the basement on Thursday as the rough plumbing has been installed under the basement floor and the inspector passed it. (This is in preparation to eventually finishing the basement with a bathroom and small kitchen area). We are getting excited to see the house start to grow.

Hope all is well with everyone.

Camp Wheeler !!

We are spending our first night at Camp Wheeler tonight. No neighbors in the campground at all!

We got the camper situated this afternoon and spread wood chips around in front of the door before putting up the awning. We have electricity and heat and filled the water before leaving Platte River. We are looking forward to being here and being able to work around the lot and watch the (slow) progress. It is starting to feel more and more like home.  In the days to come we will be clearing the dead trees and all the limbs that are laying around. We want to establish a fire pit and keep it going burning up all the dead fall laying around.

The weather forecast is for sunny skies for two days although still unseasonably cool. ( I notice that I dwell on the weather a lot on this blog, but since we have been camping all winter and spring we find that the weather dictates what we can do on a day to day basis. If its sunny we can do a lot outside even if it's cool, but cool damp weather is miserable and rain keeps us in the camper or driving around. The weather can make or break the day just like on any camping trip. We always hope for sunny and warm, especially after having such nice weather in Florida and part of the time when we were in Colorado).

That's all for now....

Where comes the Sun??

We have been kind of cooped up the last two days although we  managed to get out in between the rain drops. Friday was getting used to shopping in Traverse City and Saturday we stayed close to camp and did some bike riding and hiking. If I could describe the weather the past two days I would call it the drizzling schitz! It has been cloudy, drizzly, cold, misty, dank and foggy! (Did I forget to mention gloomy?) The weather channel says that the normal day time highs should be around 67 drgrees. We have been at 55. Oh well, can't change the weather.

Today we are moving camp to Wheeler Road. We are going to set up out of the contractors way and will start cleaning up the lot and moving a few things to the property to make us comfortable. The sun is finally out this morning so we are anticipating good things..

We heard that there was a strong gust of wind in Romeo and it blew Mike's garage away! That was so convenient since he is ready to start digging and pourning footings for a new one.

Love to all

One row of block on the footings waiting to pour the basement floor.

This is what 100 black morels looks like.

Friday at Platte River

We had a gorgeous day yesterday and got a lot done in Suttons Bay and stopped by Goodfallows. We also stopped by the property and the masons have laid a course of block around the footings. This is in preparation to pour the basement floor next week. I also got extremely lucky and found a patch of morel mushrooms and after picking wound up with a hundred tasty treats!

Google had taken the blog website down for maintenance last night, so this is the first time I am able to post since Wednesday.
Hope everyone is well.

No News But Rain

Today was supposed to be a nice day according to the weatherman's forecast on Tuesday. Instead, we had big rain and thunderstorms in the morning, a cloudy afternoon, and rain all evening. I sure hope that all this rain encourages the elusive Morel mushrooms to come out of hiding! I haven't found nary a one so far.

We sat around camp all morning and caught up on paperwork and websites, changing our address where ever needed. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

May peace and love rain down on you.

The Trilliums are in bloom, but where are the morels

6607 S. Wheeler Rd., Maple City, MI, 49664

We put up a mail box today and watched the footings being poured for our new house. This is the first actual part of the house that has been done so May 10 is the official start of construction. The weather seems to be cooperating with us now even though they are calling for much rain over the next week or so.

We are enjoying camping at Platte River National Campground and are beginning to feel at home in this part of the state. We are really looking forward to living here and can't wait to share it with everyone.

Two cement trucks hauled in concrete to fill the forms for the footings.

Once the footings cure the masons will come back to lay a row of block around the basement and four courses of block around the garage to prepare for pouring the cement floors.

Back in the North Country

We got back to Leland on Sunday and spent the evening with the Goodfallows for Mother’s day. This morning we took a ride to Wheeler Road to check on progress with construction. The electric company was finishing the hook-up for temporary electric service and the masons were finishing setting up forms for the basement and garage footings so that they can start pouring cement on Tuesday. Nancy got her first look at the property since last winter and was pleased with the way things are shaping up. Later we drove over to Maple City and talked to the Post Office about setting up a mail box at the new home site. We hope to do that tomorrow so we can start receiving mail there.

We had a great weekend in Romeo and camped at Mike’s house. All the kids came by to celebrate Mother’s day on Saturday and we got to visit with some friends as well. Thanks everyone for the wonderful  time.

We are now camped at Platte River National Campground at the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore and did some bike riding and walked the beach for a while before dinner. This is a really nice campground and the sites are spread out quite well. Only one loop out of four is open and it is about a third full. We had a nice clear day today in the high sixties. Hope the weather holds out for us. My internet reception is poor here so pictures will have to wait for now.

Hope everyone is well.

Back in Romeo

We made it to Michigan on Thursday. We stopped in Ferndale to pick up Nancy's van and visited with Becky and Dave and the kids. Later we pulled the trailer to Mike's in Romeo and backed in to the driveway to establish our camp for the next three nights. Everything is good and we have been catching up with everyone here.

On Sunday we will move up to Leland to see the Goodfallows and spend Mother's Day with them. Then its on to Platte River National Campground and then Wheeler Road to see how the job site is progressing.

Hope everyone is well.

Greetings Kids

We spent a day in Shipshewana, Indiana today and I never saw so many Amish carts in all my life. It was almost like Mackinac Island with all the clip clop of little hooves! We toured the furniture stores, the meat shop, and the downtown area and later drove over to Middleton to where all the camper factories are. This is quite an interesting little area.

Tomorrow we are finally planning on crossing the border back into Michigan for the first time since we left in January. We are excited to visit with the kids and grand kids and hope to see our friends at the same time. We will head north to Leland and Wheeler Road on Sunday or Monday.

The carts were everywhere! This is a parking lot in town. Zoom in and read the sign, they have designated parking spaces!

Here's one going down the highway.

The Amish version of a John Deere tractor. This one is six horse power.

And a critter pic to end the show. Click on the picture to zoom in. See the Kildeer and look under it's tail. Those are four eggs it was sitting on.

We're Getting Closer to Our Home

We made it to just north of Ft Wayne, Indiana today. The drive was easy with little traffic until we got to Indianapolis. We had a gorgeous weather day with sunny skies and temps in the mid-fifties. We saw a lot of flooded fields and flooded rivers driving across Illinois and Indiana so we know that there has been a lot of rain here. I hope some of it found it's way into Lake Michigan.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Shipshewana to see some Amish stuff. Nancy is particularly excited to visit an Amish Flea Market. I am curious to see if Amish fleas are any different than regular ones.

Have a nice day....

Relaxing in Illinois

We had a quiet day today with nothing much to report. We took a ride into Clinton today for some supplies and to mail some mail. We rode bikes and hiked around the small lake at the campground. Tomorrow we will be packing up and moving further east.

We saw that we finally got Bin Laden. I hope that will help with the war on Terror, but I'm afraid it will have the same effect as our "War on Drugs"!

That's all for now.

This goose is confused. He's not supposed to roost in trees.

Near the Land of Lincoln!

No, not the car!

We moved from Missouri, through St. Louis and are now in central Illinois just north of Springfield. The weather was nice and sunny in the morning but clouded up and we arrived here in the rain.

Our trip took us across the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and we were surprised to see how high they were. The Mississippi was over it's banks in several places and the road we drove on was under water just yesterday. The flood plains of the Mississippi are so wide one can only imagine the volume of water that goes through this valley. Once we got west of the Missouri River the land became rolling and reminded us of the Irish Hills of Michigan with rolling green fields and patches of forest. The landscape has continued that way alll the way to mid Illinois.

We plan on spending two nights here and will do some exploring tomorrow.

Here are some pictures from our last stop in Missouri, Arrow Rock....

Beautiful down town Arrow Rock. Almost as it was in the 1830's.

The J. Huston Tavern. The tavern has been serving meals to travellers continuously since 1834. One of the oldest continuoulsy operating restaurants west of the Mississippi. We had dinner here on Saturday evening.

Click on the sign to read about Arrow Rock's history. This was in the park on the east side of "downtown". (The 2000 census listed the population here at 79!).