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.