Tag Archives: Leelanau

Grand Rapids, Leelanau, Michigan

Slip-sliding into Winter

19 Comments

December 17, 2020, Leelanau County, written by Jim

Back when I was still working, one of my colleagues scoffed at the mention of climate change, which back then was referred to as global warming. Knowing he was a capitalist, I chuckled and said to him that he was missing out on a huge opportunity. I told him “buy a place on Lake Michigan and build a tiki bar, as Michigan will be a tropical paradise and Florida will be under water!” I saw the wheels turning as he fell silent. Love ya’ buddy! 🙂

Well, we aren’t quite there yet, at least in Michigan…but we are going to be in the 40’s this Christmas! El Niño is in full force, and our snowfall totals are way down. While we aren’t seeing tourists lounging on Grand Traverse Bay’s beaches, we did see a teenager riding a skateboard in shorts the other night in Traverse City. Oh, wait…that’s not unusual. With that said, our snowfall totals are definitely below average.

We did get a very snowy week in early December, which allowed me to get my tractor into snow removal mode! The combination of bucket on the front and blade on the back made quick work of the foot of the white stuff that fell. The bulk of our driveway is gravel, but the steep section by the road is asphalt. One portion of that is a 10% grade with a sweeping curve. When I was in high school, I plowed our church parking lot with the same set-up on a 1953 Ford tractor, but that lot was flat as a pancake. Our hill concerned me, so I took to the John Deere Facebook group I belong to for suggestions. There were two schools of thought to that hill. One said to use tire chains for traction. The others said that my turf tires were sufficient to run up and down it, warning that tire chains would damage the asphalt. Not wanting to mess up our pretty, new driveway surface, I chose the latter…even though I had already purchased the chains. It is here I should mention that I was running the back blade inverted…the concave portion facing rearward…so as to not scoop all the gravel off our drive. I continued that practice down the asphalt section, which left a hard-packed 1/2 inch of snow on it. That part of the driveway takes three passes to clear, with the bulk of it being finished it two. After my second pass down, I lifted the blade, turned around and headed up the hill. About 50 feet from the top, all 4 wheels started spinning and the front of the tractor drifted sideways. Being sideways on a tractor on an icy 10% grade is not an ideal place to be, so I went into problem-solving mode and dropped the bucket and back blade down. That acted as a brake and it also lowered my center of gravity. I came to a stop perpendicular to the driveway, 200 feet from the road…still on that steep grade. I gingerly got off the tractor and informed Diana of my predicament, then set out to try and use my truck to pull the tractor back up. I ended up not having enough tow strap and chains to reach it, so I scrapped that idea. I then got back on the tractor, refastened my seatbelt and lifted the front bucket ever so slightly. I then tried to drive forward, which swung the front end around and pointed it downhill. With the back blade acting as a brake, I slid all the way to the road. I then slogged through the deep snow on the side and joined the former school of thought and got the chains. Once installed, that did the trick. I backed up the drive without issue.

I’m now turning the rear blade with the concave portion facing forward on the asphalt section, which scrapes down to bare pavement. I then sprinkle a light coating of ice melt on it for insurance. That seems to have taken care of the problem. Now…where do we want to put that tiki bar…

Many of you may be wondering why we chose to forego the warm beaches of Florida for the winter scenes in the above photos. There was no one particular reason, but the fact we were just settling in and enjoying our new place made it really hard to leave. El Niño was not yet forecasted, so that didn’t play into it. Little did we know at the time that we would be facing a major health challenge that made us extremely glad to be close to our Michigan doctors, which we’ve kept throughout our full time RV journey. Diana had her annual mammogram in early November in Grand Rapids, which revealed a suspicious spot. Further testing revealed that it was a very treatable tumor. She underwent surgery in early December. We meet with her doctors again over the next month, as there will be further treatment to improve her chances of not having the cancer come back. It all looks very promising, and a process we are glad to complete from the comfort of our home base. If there is one thing we want to stress to others, it’s this: For your own sake and the sake of your loved ones, stay up to date on your physicals and annual checkups. Both of us are now cancer survivors who were fortunate to have caught our cancers through early detection.

Beyond all of that, I am sure there are those of you who are shivering at the thought of us up here in northern Michigan. We had those concerns too, but we knew we had spent our first 55 years in snowy environs and were well equipped to handle it. What are our thoughts to this point? Mind you, it is still only mid-December, but we have to say we are pleasantly surprised! You may recall that we named our homestead “MapleVistas” as both a continuation of our full time RV moniker and the fact that our property is loaded with maple trees…and we have this ‘vista’ of the valley below us:

Well, 99% of our trees are deciduous, which means our vista expanded when the leaves fell.

Our sunrises have been incredible, as a result!

The lack of leaves, coupled with the snow actually makes our great room brighter than in the summer. We weren’t expecting that, as we’ve seen plenty of dreary winters in our lifetimes. Still, I am sure we will be glad to see the leaves return, come spring. We’ve also discovered that this time of year is known as ‘locals season’. Leelanau does not roll up the sidewalks once the summer tourists leave, as there are enough locals who support the shops and wineries in the winter to make it worthwhile to stay open.

Lane, Patti, Diana and I took advantage of that recently and visited a few uncrowded wineries.

They also took us on an incredible hike in our neighborhood about the time we were feeling a bit shell shocked from Diana’s diagnosis. That was much appreciated and good for our souls. We were also blessed with visits bearing the gifts of friendship and food from our neighbors on each side of us, Renate and Linda. Having great neighbors is really special.

So, that’s our current situation. Challenges and blessings, all rolled into one incredible life that we are fortunate to be living. We are thankful indeed. We appreciate the prayers that have come our way and the ones that have yet to be prayed. We hold each and every one of you close in our hearts this holiday season and we wish you all the best. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Kentucky, Leelanau, Tennessee

Buttoning Up the Cabin and Heading South

14 Comments

Leelanau County, MI to Melbourne Beach, FL – November 9, 2021 – Written by Jim

Our last few weeks in Michigan were exceptionally busy, as we not only were finishing up our 2021 projects on the cabin, but we also had to winterize the place. We were fortunate to have dry weather in the 60’s, but the nights grew steadily colder. We had no intention of repeating our winter of 2014/2015 in our RV in Michigan. See our ‘Cold Weather RVing’ tab above for more on that adventure. Time to pack up and roll south!

We had three major things to complete before the end of this year on the construction project. First was more for our peace of mind than anything; we wanted to finish assembling and installing the kitchen cabinets.

All of the upper cabinets are done, as is the pantry cabinet on the left. The base cabinets are assembled and in place; they just need doors, a rear wall on the island, and countertops. All of that gold you see in the photo is the morning sun streaming through the windows. There’s a lot of solar gain right there!

The second project we needed to get done was to finish encapsulating the crawl space. You may recall the dirt floor we have down there:

We had been running a dehumidifier constantly and the lowest we could get the humidity level was to 65%. Since total encapsulation is required by the building code, we figured we would be better off to get the 12-mil thick floor liner laid down before we left.

What a difference that made. Not only is it bright and clean, but the humidity level dropped to 42%. There is no need to run the dehumidifier anymore.

The last project was actually our last subcontracted job: the gutters.

Michigan Gutter out of Traverse City did the work for us. They were in and out within a few hours. When I commented on the one piece 54 foot length of the gutter on the far side of the house, the one installer told me that he held the company record for length: a one piece gutter that was a whopping 252 feet long! I’ll bet he had a lot of helpers that day. When the crew left, we were officially finished with subcontractors. Everything else from here on out will be completed by the two of us.

After blowing out the water lines and securing the place, we hooked up and headed south! We took a few weeks to get to Melbourne Beach, and managed a few highlights along the way.

One of those was a stop at Col. Harland Sanders’ original Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. KFC has recently done a total renovation of this location, making it a combination museum/working restaurant. It wasn’t open yet…except for the drive through, but we could see through the windows. They did a nice job.

We even got to see the Colonel himself at Sanders Park in downtown Corbin. 🙂

Another interesting stop we made along the way was at Cumberland Gap National Historic Park. This is one of the few natural gaps in the Appalachian Mountains that has been used for thousand of years by animals and humans seeking passage east and west.

Here’s a panoramic of Diana coming up one side of the gap and going down the other side. There are two tunnels that pass below this area, an auto and a rail passage. Daniel Boone passed through the gap in the 1700’s and the area was heavily fortified during the Civil War. With the ruggedness of the terrain surrounding the trail, we were completely surprised at the fact that a US highway ran through here as recently as 1996. The US Highway Department and the National Park Service did a fantastic job of restoring and reforesting the trail!

The sign at the saddle of the gap reads: Salt seeking buffalo, Moccasin clad warriors, Dreaming Pioneer, Battling Civil War soldiers. Each was here in the Historic Cumberland Gap and now so are you. This is the Historic Cumberland Gap. Across from the sign is an offshoot trail that heads up to Tri-State Peak. We followed that trail to a small gazebo that covers a US Geological Survey marker.

Here’s Diana with her feet in three states simultaneously: Kentucky on the left, Tennessee on the right and Virginia behind her. Surprisingly, there are 62 places in the US where three (and only three) states meet. Of those, 35 are on dry land and 27 are in water.

The last highlight was a return to Savannah, GA and Fort Pulaski National Monument.

The engineering that went into this fort is remarkable, yet it was rendered obsolete by the Union Army’s introduction of the rifled cannon shell. More on that story can be found in our post from our first visit by clicking HERE.

We arrived at our winter home in Melbourne Beach on November 1.

We look forward to a winter full of spectacular sunrises, sunsets and (hopefully) a few rocket launches! Stay tuned for that. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Friends, Leelanau, Michigan

A Friendly Push

19 Comments

October 8, 2021 – Leelanau County, MI – Written by Jim

“Pushhhhh.”

That was Diana’s dad’s response back in the 1980’s when she asked him how he was able to find the energy to totally renovate a house in the evening, all while working during the day as a superintendent for a commercial construction firm.

At the time, he was overseeing the renovation of the concrete topping at Buick City, working twelve hours a day and being on call the other twelve. That job was a monumental task in its own right, let alone throwing a home remodel into the mix. Diana and I have thought of Bud’s statement many times this summer, as we’ve had to push ourselves a bit to get our cabin building project to where it needed to be by season’s end. As the days slipped by on the calendar, it seemed at times that we had a bit more on our plate than we could chew.

Enter the friendly push.

Every one of our friends who has stopped by this summer has added to our project in some way, whether it be through moral support or by picking up a tool and digging in. These past few weeks have been a flurry of activity, fueled by the “pushhhhh” of our friends.

One of the deadlines we had to meet was finishing up the mechanical work this year. That involved all heating and venting work, including the ductwork from the microwave oven to the outside. In order to complete that, the microwave had to be installed above the range. I called my friend John who was there in a flash to help me with that project. Of course, I failed to get a photo. But…

…John’s wife Julie was able to photobomb her own photo when she shot this image of our friends Cindy and Jessica, who had stopped by to check out our progress. Julie is in the reflection in the door glass. Cindy and Jessica are neighbors in Kalamazoo, and John, Cindy, Diana and I all lived in the same dorm in college.

A week or so later, our friends Jim and Barb went way out of their way to lend a hand with our build. You may recall that we had stopped at their place in South Dakota to help them with their barndominium in 2019. Details of that project can be seen HERE. This trip, the two of them had been fishing and hunting north of Lake Superior and drove several hundred miles out of their way to lend us a hand.

We started out our long weekend by showing them the local sights. From there, we plotted our course to complete some key projects. First up was emptying the contents of our local storage room, as we had stashed many of our supplies there over the summer. We filled our 16 foot cargo trailer twice, so this was no small feat.

Next up was digging a trench across our driveway for a service conduit.

While I had loosened the soil with a metal tube chained to my tractor, Jim did the lion’s share of the digging. No better way to get to know Leelanau than to dig into it’s rocky soil! Once that was complete, Jim helped me add a support beam to the deck in the above photo that has the tools leaning against it.

We finished up by adding some diagonal braces to the main deck, which took out the sway at the outer reaches of it. When we were all done, Jim pulled out his drone and took some aerial photos for us. Here is one that shows our hideaway really well:

That was a huge weekend. We can’t thank them enough for their help!

The next big events to happen were the electrician and the HVAC tradesmen finishing their work.

It’s exciting to have power and heat! Those were followed by the electrical and mechanical final inspections, both of which were approved.

We also had a visit from our friends Becky and Joe!

They were on a journey from their home in Montana to our park in Florida. We hung out at our place for a bit before going to dinner at one of our favorite places, Hop Lot. It was great to see them!

Now we are on a push to finish a few things before we head south for the winter.

We have been able to complete more of the cabinet work this week. This won’t be totally finished before we leave, but it will be closer than this.

We also moved our appliances inside from the barn. We want to test them out and make sure they work while they are in the same year that we purchased them. That refrigerator was a tight fit!

We have a few more things we want to accomplish before we leave for Florida, so be sure to stay tuned for that. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Leelanau, Michigan

Wrapping Up the Outside

24 Comments

Leelanau County, Michigan – August 28, 2021 – Written by Jim

It’s funny how things seem to come together sometimes.

When we initially planned our cabin project last winter, we knew the first priority was to finish the outside, so the building was weathertight. Our portion of the interior work couldn’t begin until the drywall finishers were done anyway, so we devoted all of our attention to getting the siding completed. Amazingly, those two portions of the job wrapped up within hours of each other.

When we last spoke, we were finishing up the siding on the front of the cabin.

That took a day longer than planned, but it is complete nonetheless. I moved around to the window wall on Monday, August 16, the same day the drywall finishers started.

Siding this wall has been similar to an unwritten song that has played in my head repeatedly for nearly a year. I wasn’t quite sure how it was all going to play out until I actually started pounding nails. The wide band between the windows is not in line with the fascia on the front and back of the house, which messed with my symmetrical mind when it came time to locate the dividing board between the shakes and the main siding. At one point, we considered not using shakes on this side at all and siding the entire thing in blue. In the end, it was a non-issue, as we filled the entire space between the windows with white PVC, which made the windows look like one system.

With the divider in place, I began the shake siding. The window angles and the roof angle are not the same, which added to the job’s complexity.

It was at this point that our friends Rick and Linda showed up. We took a much needed break from construction to tour the Leelanau Peninsula and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We had a great time!

The next morning, Rick was at our place, ready to work. He helped me erect the scaffolding to full height and then we started siding in earnest.

Having him cut pieces and hand them up to me saved me many trips up and down the scaffolding. He helped out for two days and moved the project forward in a big way.

Thank you for the huge jump start, Rick! We then were fortunate to have a visit from our niece Becky, her husband Dan and our great nephew Miles.

It sure was good to see them!

Meanwhile, the drywall finishers were working in earnest inside.

At one point, the dust was rolling out of every window and door in the place! I was quite content to be working on the outside that morning. It was at this stage that I wondered who would finish first…them or me. I also wondered if I would have enough shake siding.

Luckily, I had three pieces left over from the barn project. I ended up only having one full piece at the end.

Here I am with the final piece, which thankfully meant that I was able to remove the top level of scaffolding, Thats a long way up!

I then went about the process of filling in between the windows with white PVC.

Piece by piece, I worked my way across. When we manufactured cabinets in my working days, our saws would cut within a thousandth of an inch. Houses are not built to those exacting standards. The spaces between each window varied a bit, which added to the challenge of filling the voids. Add to that the fact that the PVC didn’t come wide enough to cover the gap. I ended up slotting the sides of the boards and splining them.

Here I am fitting the last piece into place. I used a little silicone caulk to fill in the gaps and …

…that’s a wrap! In the end, I was competing with a weather system that was rolling in the next day (Friday). That was the day the drywall guys were supposed to get done. They ended up finishing on Thursday a few hours before I did. Friday ended up being a bonus day for us, as Diana and I purchased supplies in the morning and I used the shop vac to suck up drywall dust the rest of the day.

I added a PVC extension to reach the ceiling.

I had to repeatedly knock the dust from the filter, as the dust caked on it. A nasty job, indeed. Diana and I are going to Swiffer the entire place today to get it ready to prime. Stay tuned for that in our next post. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Leelanau

All Dried In

16 Comments

June 20, 2021 – Leelanau County, MI – Written by Jim

It’s been a whirlwind the past few weeks, and I’m happy to report that our cabin is dried in! When we last wrote, we had the roof deck on our trusses.

Once that was done, the framers moved inside to frame the interior walls. Having vaulted ceilings throughout complicated matters, but the trade-off was that 2/5 of the house is wide open. Richard and Paul did this while Ryan worked outside.

Meanwhile, I dug out the trunks of a few of our trees that were buried during excavation. I had to build a rock retaining wall to keep the hill in place. All rocks were unearthed during the crawl space dig. I left a gap for the propane line to be run from the tank.

Ryan put on the roof underlayment and then framed the smaller decks on the north side. Following that, he and Paul put in the windows and doors.

Ryan then shingled the roof, while Paul, Richard and I dug holes for the main deck. Paul is even more of a rock sleuth than I am, and he was in all his glory on our hill. He knew the scientific name for each boulder or rock we exhumed. He even found a piece of pyrite, otherwise known as fools gold. The straw you are seeing in the above photo is on the steep hill that I had to reseed after the excavator tore it up. There was only one way for him to backfill that side and it involved making a mess of my landscaping work from last fall. I’ll reseed the rest of the lawn as I find time.

Here is the front of the cabin, all dried in!

And here is the back. With that, we bid our framing crew farewell. It is difficult to comprehend that we have only been back in Michigan for two months and we have accomplished this much. We feel very fortunate and are extremely grateful!

One thing we found out during framing was that we would not be able to work on siding until we received approval on our rough framing. That doesn’t happen until the rough mechanical, rough electrical and rough plumbing are approved. Wanting to keep the ball rolling while those trades did their work, we scheduled an extra inspection for our deck posts. Those were subsequently approved, so that allowed us to fill the holes around the posts and start finishing the decks.

Since I could still poke my head between the joists, I figured this was the best time to put landscape fabric and rock underneath to keep the weeds to a minimum. I used larger rocks found on the property along the bottom edge to keep the gravel from sliding down the hill. That is 2 tons of gravel that I picked up on Friday, the most I was willing to put on our utility trailer. I’ll get more this next week.

On the social side of things, we went to see George and Grace’s home they just purchased elsewhere on the peninsula. We met them at Wild Cherry Resort in 2015 and they have also volunteered at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. You may recall that we visited them at their winter home in Rockport, Texas, six months before Hurricane Harvey came ashore at the end of their street. While their house survived, the town around it was devastated. They have since moved their winter home base to Austin. We also had Rod and Mary over to our place to see the progress, as well as our neighbors Jeff and Renate.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we will hopefully show some progress on the decks and the interior of our cabin. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Family, Friends, Leelanau, Michigan

Autumn Maples in All of Their Splendor

31 Comments

September-October 2020 – Leelanau County, Michigan.

Written by Jim

Knowing we had a lot of things to do to wrap up our summer in Leelanau, we set a mid-October departure date. Not only would that allow us the time to finish up our projects, but it would provide us the treat of seeing our trees in all of their autumn splendor. Hopefully we wouldn’t push it too far to where we had to descend our steep driveway in the snow!

One of our projects was to take down four dead trees that could have posed a problem over the winter. The last thing we wanted was to arrive in the spring to a tree across the driveway.

We will have plenty of campfire wood next year!

Diana built a compost bin and has been filling it for the last month or so.

We should end up with some good mulch from this!

We also found time for friends and family. Lane & Patti and Rod & Mary joined us for happy hour, and Diana’s cousin Debbie came up for a weekend. Diana’s cousin Jerry has visited three times over the summer and cousin Reed visited twice. Our friend Tim also visited while he was in the area on vacation from California. We failed to get photos every time!

Also, our friends Terry and Diane came up from Grand Rapids and were our inaugural RV guests for a night! We had a great visit with them.

One of the interesting discoveries on our property was an old split rail and barbed wire fence that runs ten feet inside the west property line. We did some research and found out who owned the property in 1870…the earliest we could find. That family continued to keep the property into the 1970’s, making it a centennial farm. There were two other owners between them and us.

The fence is much older than 1970, and we have made contact with the family who originally owned it. More on that in another post. We are most interested with who may have put up the fence and also who planted the apple trees. A few of those are still producing fruit, despite their advanced age.

Most of the fence had fallen down, so we are installing metal posts on the hidden side to keep it off the ground so it won’t rot as fast. It’s not intended to act as a barrier; it’s more for asthetics and history.

It wasn’t long and Leelanau’s leaves started changing color.

We were hearing from the locals that it was the prettiest fall they had seen in a long time.

The trees were ablaze with autumn hues

Scenes like this, no matter which direction we looked!

Even the sky got in on the action. 🙂

A caramel apple, cinnamon donut and some hot apple cider would complete this scene.

Here is the view looking down our road towards Grand Traverse Bay. The bay can be seen in the distance, along with the bay’s eastern shore near the tip of Torch Lake. A mere 15 miles as the crow flies; it takes an hour to drive the 46 miles around the bottom of the bay to get there.

And with that, we bid adieu to Leelanau for the winter! Our cottage is staked out, plans are drawn and we hope to start our build in the spring. We are currently in Alabama, and we are headed to warmer latitudes to sink our toes into the sand…and to check out some cool rocket launches to share with you. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Family, Friends, Michigan

Goals Set and Goals Achieved

39 Comments

September 1, 2020 – Leelanau County, Michigan

When we left Florida this spring, we had a set of goals in place to install our utilities and build our barn on our property in Michigan. With the onset of COVID-19, we figured that we might have to scale those goals back a bit. Well, here we are at the beginning of September with all of our plans completed and more. It has been a great summer for us, despite the pandemic!

We last left you with siding on west side and back of the barn. Since then, we’ve finished the east side, then moved the scaffolding around the front.

The peak was a real trick to reach. Good thing we had the extension levelers for the bottom!

Here I am with the last piece of shake siding.

It was tippy-toes to get that up there!

Before long, we had all of the siding complete! Coach lights and gutters put the finishing touches on the exterior…

…while lights finished off the interior. That officially wrapped up our goals for the summer! We didn’t stop there though. I added a workbench inside the barn and then focused on finishing our shed that I rushed to build last summer.

I tacked on the batten strips, painted it and then roofed it to match the barn.

Another project we had was to cut up all the logs from the trees we had cut down along the driveway. We gave the wood to Lane and Patti, as they had helped us out earlier by supplying us with water the first month we were here.

Lane and I had a couple days of cutting.

We ended up with three loads like this. Diana and I saved two nice logs and took them to the sawmill near us to make into some pieces for the cottage. More on that in a future post.

While Lane and I were doing that, Diana had noticed that a bush she had trimmed earlier had sprouted a bunch of new shoots. Looking it up, she discovered that it was Autumn Olive, a highly invasive plant that takes over the forest edges. Turns out that it was a suggested planting for erosion control in the mid 20th century…until it started taking over everything. Diana went on a mission to rid our property of it.

Here she is, loppers in hand! Per the NW Michigan Invasive Species Network and her own research, she is cutting them and chemically treating the cut stems.

We pile them up and chain them to the bucket of the tractor…

…and stack them on our burn pile.

We will wait until there are no leaves on the trees to torch this…preferably on a rainy day. We still have a lot more to add to this pile.

We are also trying to grow grass in several places. That means spreading topsoil, seeding and putting straw on top.

It’s nice having a car hauler for a trailer, as I can drive right up the ramps and scoop off the dirt with the tractor.

Here I am spreading it out before seeding it. While I am doing that, Diana has been planting Daylilies that Mary gave us and Iris that Lane and Patti gave us.

Here are the Daylilies…

…and here she is planting the Iris.

So as you can see, we’ve accomplished a lot this summer! It hasn’t been all work though. We’ve had several physically distanced get-togethers with several friends and family, along with a day of kayaking at Sleeping Bear Dunes. We even got to meet our great nephew for the first time!

Miles is wearing a little outfit we got him at RonJon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach. Becky and Dan couldn’t be happier, and Charlie even approves. 🙂

As we reflect on the summer, we look back to a photo Lane and Patti sent us the week before we arrived on May 2nd:

Our place was nothing but our little shed and a building site in need of leveling. Compare that to this photo I took today from the same place, a mere four months later:

We are thrilled with where we ended up. Hopefully our cottage build next summer goes as smoothly as this year’s barn build did. 🙂

Be sure to stay tuned for our next post, as we wrap up our summer here in Leelanau. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Michigan

She Sells Sea Shells by the…Cherry Orchard?

30 Comments

July 22, 2020 – Leelanau County, Michigan

Written by Jim

One of the more interesting discoveries on our property in Leelanau County has been what lies just below the surface. Our land sits perched on a hill about a mile west of Grand Traverse Bay and four miles east of Lake Michigan. We are 150 feet above those bodies of water. Our soil is well drained, with a mix of topsoil, sand and lots of gravel. That gravel…and our hill…is courtesy of the Laurentide Ice Sheet that plowed its way southward from Canada 10,000 years ago. As it moved, it pushed whatever soil and stone it could dislodge in front of it. Much of that rock was sedimentary, having been laid down at the bottom of an ancient sea that once covered the central portion of North America. In our case, that sea was well to our north. Some of the gravel and stone is pink granite, which is found along the Canadian Shield on the north shore of Lake Superior…again, well to our north. In any case, sticking a shovel in the ground around here will bring up a multitude of surprises!

Mid June brought a project that required a bit of digging. We needed to run an electric line from our barn to our new RV sites, a distance of 100 feet. Rather than fight the rocky soil, we rented this beauty:

Four hours with this trencher goes for about $250, so we also cut a trench to the future cabin and put 2″ conduit in. That saved having to rent this again next year.

The trench to the RV sites was fairly easy, as the top portion was fill that the excavator brought in.

Not so on the other trench. This was all glacial till. Note how it is not a straight line, as the Ditch Witch was bouncing off of every boulder it encountered! Let’s just say that we were glad it finished the project in one piece. This particular slice required quite a bit of hand digging, as the machine couldn’t go deep enough because of the rock.

So what did we find?

This is an example of a Charlevoix stone, a cousin to the Petoskey stone. Both are some 350 million years old and are forms of coral from that ancient seabed I spoke of earlier.

Here is a Petoskey stone, which can be distinguished by its geometric shaped coral.

On occasion, I would toss a seemingly mundane gray rock onto the pile, only to have it split in two.

This one split and left not only the imprint of a shell on the right half, but the actual shell on the left half. Once again, that shell is millions of years old.

And check out this one. There is a lot going on in this beauty! This is not anything that would’ve lived on the bottom of freshwater Lake Michigan, but rather the shallow saltwater sea that was to our north and west. This was dredged up by the glaciers and transported here during the last ice age…high up on our hill.

Finding treasures like those makes doing work like this a lot more fun!

The rest of our project is coming along right on schedule.

We’ve been busy putting up fascia and soffit…

…and siding! We are just a few days from being done with that project. The back of the barn is built into the hill; that’s why the red portion looks so short. We should be able to get our final inspections within the next couple of weeks. Look for photos of the finished product in our next post.

The other excitement around here was when we discovered that a few of our large maples were hollow inside and were in danger of falling on our barn and future cabin. Had we noticed them before we built the barn, we could’ve cut them down ourselves. We chose to have a tree service come in and take them down for us.

That was a job better left to the professionals!

That’s about it from northern Michigan and our little slice of paradise. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing, Michigan

A Snowball in Florida?

19 Comments

February 1, 2020 – Melbourne Beach, Florida

Written by Jim

The metaphor of a tiny snowball rolling down a hill and gaining size was a thought that kept going through my head in early January. With the fact that we were on the coast in Florida…at an elevation of 10 feet above sea level and with us in shorts…it was just that; a metaphor. That thought was rooted in my attempted recovery from the most recent bout of whatever crud was going around. It turns out that it had snowballed into a full-blown case of bronchitis. I ended up coughing so hard that I pulled muscles in my back and aggravated my sciatic issues on my left side. I could barely walk, once I mustered the energy to get out of my chair. I was a mess, to put it mildly. On more than one occasion, I thanked God that I had decided against working for UPS this year.

First order of business was to get over the bronchitis. A trip to Surfside Urgent Care netted me several prescriptions, including an inhaler to stop the out-of-control coughing. If you owned stock in Walgreens over that period of time, you are welcome for the upswing in your portfolio. 🙂 The concoction of drugs, coupled with some great nursing from my lovely caregiver Diana, did the trick. By mid month, the snowball had stopped rolling.

The next thing on the agenda was to address the sciatic issue. My leg pain had subsided, but it was replaced with numbness. I contacted my nephew Dr. Dan, who is a physical therapist in Michigan, asking advice on what direction to go in seeking health care. My primary care doctor is in Michigan, and I really wanted to get a jump on this. Dan provided me with a ton of information (Thank you!) and a recommendation to seek out a good physical therapist down here. Florida has a law that allows a person to get 30 days of PT without a physicians referral, so I connected with one that was highly rated and accepted by our insurance. I’m happy to say that after a week and a half, I am making great progress! The snowball is indeed melting.

In Space Coast news, we’ve had three launches so far this year. January 6 saw the launch of Starlink 2, the second operational flight of SpaceX’s constellation of internet-providing satellites. With it being an evening launch that was flying northeast, we knew our best views would be further north of our winter home. We headed up to Patrick Air Force Base, which sits just south of Cape Canaveral.

What a show! What you are seeing in this photo (left to right) is the trail from the main engines, followed by MECO (main engine cut off). The next dot is the second-stage engine start (SES), followed by that portion of the rocket fading off into orbit. At that point, the rocket is outside of the atmosphere, so the flame disappears. Farther to the right, the first re-entry burn from the first stage can be seen, as it slows down to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, located several hundred miles out to sea. The final burn wasn’t visible, as it was over the horizon. I guess Earth isn’t flat, after all. :). For a full list of SpaceX acronyms…some of them hilarious… click HERE. BFR is one of my favorites, as is FTBA. 🙂

The next launch was the much anticipated IFA test. IFA stands for In-Flight Abort. NASA will be launching astronauts on SpaceX rockets, and this test was performed to see if the capsule could escape from an exploding rocket. We decided that Patrick AFB was the best spot to view it from, so away we went!

The weather had other plans, as the rocket disappeared into the clouds. We did hear a tremendous BOOM though (that’s not an acronym), as the rocket experienced RSD (rapid scheduled disassembly). Here’s what it looked like on Doppler radar:

The smaller green dot to the right of the explosion is the capsule flying away from the exploding rocket. The flight was a success and we should expect to see astronauts headed to the space station this spring.

The last launch for January was another SpaceX Starlink launch. Having a PT commitment later that morning, we chose to view it from our park:

It never gets old. 🙂

The other entertainment around here is Bingo and the weekly meat shoot at the local Moose lodge. This version involves a deck of cards instead of guns, but the prizes are still sizable cuts of meat. I won some delicious pork chops and Diana scored the 50/50 a few weeks back. It’s always a good time, as a large group of us from the park shows up. The caller refers to us as the Big Table.

We also had lunch with our friends Rod and Mary, we went to Merritt Island with our friend Paul and his Aunt Joan, and we did a Costco run with our full-time RV friend Kathy. This is the fifth state we’ve connected with her in.

And we’ve gained some ground on our garage project. We have all of our subcontractors lined up now and we’ve secured our land use permit. Once we have the building permit in hand, we can begin!

Actually, there is a fair amount of white stuff up on our hill, so we will wait until it melts before we head up there. We don’t want my snowball metaphor to become a reality. 🙂

Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing, Michigan

Following the Autumn Leaves

29 Comments

October 6 – November 1, 2019 – Michigan to Florida

Written by Jim

In our last post, I mentioned relearning how to drive in the U.S. after spending a month in the U.K. and Ireland. Our delayed flight got us back after dark, so we had to navigate the aggressive freeways of Chicago in an unfamiliar rental car. Talk about wanting to get back on the plane! Once past Gary and into Michigan, the traffic eased and we were able to relax. Jet lag caught up to us soon after, so we grabbed a comfy room at the Hampton Inn in South Haven. After a delicious breakfast at the Phoenix Street Cafe the next morning, we headed back to Grand Rapids to get our vehicles. A huge thank you to Terry and Diane for allowing us to store them at their home!

We moved to our base for the next week, Woodchip Campground. Our spot was just a few sites east of where we spent the winter of 2014-15. This go around, we spent the week taking care of annual physicals, dentist appointments, haircuts and such. We even bopped over to Detroit for one appointment at Henry Ford Hospital. That gave us the opportunity to drop in on Diana’s cousin Debbie on our way home. It was great to see her again. We finished up the week with our annual trip to Kalamazoo for WMU homecoming.

It’s always good to to be with our crew! After watching the Broncos beat Miami of Ohio, we headed back to our old dorm, French Hall, to check it out.

Here’s Diana knocking on the door of her old room. No one was there, unfortunately.

From Kalamazoo, we headed back up to our property in Leelanau County. We wanted to get some measurements and talk to the county building personnel while we were there. Knowing our land is loaded with maples, we were hoping our trees were colorful.

Needless to say, we were not disappointed!

It was very exciting to be able to experience our first autumn on our little slice of heaven! A note of interest: one month after this photo was taken, three feet of snow fell here. The scene is far different, indeed. With the temperatures plummeting, we made the decision to head south.

After stopping to see Diana’s sister and family in New Baltimore, Michigan, we headed towards Wapakoneta, Ohio. This tiny town is home to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon.

It is also home to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum, which is situated just a few yards from Interstate 75. We’ve driven by this unusually-shaped building many times since it opened in 1972 but have never stopped in. Fifty years and three months to the day of Neil taking that otherworldly step, we finally walked through these doors.

We were amazed at the amount of artifacts in this small museum, which included this space-flown shuttle tire that you could touch. It was far thicker than any tire I had ever handled. The exhibits also detailed the 25 astronauts that are native to Ohio. Some of the most famous are John Glenn (first American to orbit Earth) and Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13.

Ohio is also the birthplace of Judith Resnik, a member of the crew of the ill-fated shuttle, Challenger. The small U.S. and Ohio flags to the right were in her personal bag that was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean floor. She was America’s second woman in space, having flown on the space shuttle Discovery in 1984. Not only was she an astronaut, she had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, was a biomedical engineer, and an accomplished concert pianist.

And does anyone remember these? I drank many a glass of milk out of one of these as a kid. Libby Glass and Marathon Oil, both Ohio companies, manufactured and distributed these glasses during the Apollo missions. They have them for sale at the museum.

As we made our way through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, we were surprised that we hadn’t gotten ahead of the autumn leaves changing color. The drive south was much prettier than we anticipated. Our goal was to stop and see Diana’s brother who recently moved to Franklin, NC.

After setting up camp, we took a drive to see Dry Falls. This beautiful set of falls is located along US-62, one of the most twisty and narrow U.S. highways we had ever been on.

They were named for the fact that a person can remain relatively dry when walking behind them.

The next day, we spent the day with Dan, driving into Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Our destination that day was Clingman’s Dome, one of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River.

Dan had been here in the past, having hiked this portion of the Appalachian Trail with a friend of his.

The colors from the top were outstanding. These mountains were where we drove out of the autumn display, as green leaves and palm trees soon took over as we headed further south.

Before too long, we made our way to Melbourne Beach and our little slice of Florida paradise.

We look forward to a winter filled with friends and rocket launches, so stay tuned for that. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!