Some of the changes to our new home!

Yes, those Sandhill cranes are real, and very big. I was painting my front door....both doors wide open and I turned around to see them walking straight towards the open doors!!!

We still have some bare walls but kinda like the uncluttered. And those tall walls/ceilings make it look spacious without "stuff" hanging on them.

Weekly Side Trips

Now that our major work is done on the cabin, we have been trying to take some day side trips to some interesting (or not) places in northern Michigan. Two weeks ago we went up to Mackinaw City just for the day. We had a picnic lunch with the sea gulls, right on the straights of Mackinaw by the lighthouse, then shopped down main street. We took the back roads to the bridge and on the way discovered Michigan has sink holes!! Go figure...I thought only Florida had them. Huh! Yes, we hiked all the way down those wooded stairs to find a bottom of what the state says is a sink hole.

We also found this interesting metal art work right outside of Onaway. My son Neal had told me he found it on "Odd Things in MI" website. It is actually a stainless steel statue of George Washington.

Last weekend we picked up Verna and Aunt Sue and drove to Traverse City. We dropped off Verna and Andy at the casino, while the girls went to Target and out to lunch!! I really miss Target. And can't beat that female companionship!!

Yesterday, we had seen an advertisement for the FIRST "200-mile Garage Sale in Ausable Country" starting in Greyling all the way to Oscoda and back. Andy and I headed out with picnic lunch in the cooler, gas in the tank, money in our pocket and the camera on my lap. We drove from Mio to Fairview to Harrisville to Oscoda to Mckinley back to Mio. We saw 5 garage sales and stopped at only three. And only bought 2 fresh garden picked zucchini. Too say the least, a disappointment. Although the zucchini only cost 25 cents each! I made 5 loaves of zucchini bread costing me another $15.00 for ingredients and a new grater (food processor is in Florida!). But our lunch on Lake Huron at the Harrisville Harbor was real yummy and relaxing.

Done!!

We are finally done with our major projects on re-doing the cabin.

Now it is time for doing "retirement stuff" like fishing!! Taking the canoe out this week after buying our fishing license and some bait.

All moved in....

All moved in...sort of.

We rented a truck, packed it, drove to Florida, unpacked it, cleaned, put up hurricane shutters, drove back to Michigan all in a week!!!

It was alot of work. The beds are made, dishes put away, appliances installed, new wood blinds hung on all windows, grass cut and weeds pulled, even some pictures hung up! The house looks bigger with the furniture in place. Looks homey and we hated to leave.

But we had more work waiting back in Michigan. The plan is now to paint the entire outside of the cabin since the inside is complete. We worked for three days scraping, sanding, priming, replacing rotten boards, and washing the siding, and that was just the front of the house....we still have three more sides to do! We couldn't paint yet due to two days of rain, but will start that on Monday. Who thought retirement would be so much work.

I am loving it!!!

Digging out of the 1970's!

Living in Mio certainly have brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. This is the place I went for the summer and on weekends through out the spring and fall. It was my grand fathers one-room hunting cabin with a two-seater outhouse in the back. It was built some time in the 1940's and my grandfather died in 1960. My dad "acquired" it after his death, just like I have since my parents both died eleven years ago. My parents retired up here in 1978 and brought in running water, sectioned off rooms, but nothing has been done to the place since then; except for the removal of the orange shag carpet about 8 years ago. Andy and I thought it was time for the removal of the rest of the 70's!!

Amazing what a gallon of paint can do....make that seven gallons! Good bye dark wood paneling; good bye orange kitchen counter; good bye plastic bath surround. Anything within our reach was transformed, either painted or replaced. Andy is very experienced in cutting, laying and grouting tile. And I have mastered painting without blue-taping everything off.

Finally the inside is done. A lot can get done when you don't have TV reception and the nearest theater is 30 miles away.

Unfortunately, the outside still looks the same. Sad curb appeal. But the plans are under way. The new front door will be arriving today and hopefully we can install it over the weekend. Then the rest will have to wait until we return from Florida. Taking a break from renorvating this house to move our furniture to Florida and set up house keeping in that home. No work will be done down there until October. I don't know if we are excited for the "R & R" or getting the keys to our new home and becoming Floridians.

Go TIGERS!!

Sunday, Claudia, Ricardo and Andy and I went to the Detroit Tiger game. They are in a series with the Oakland A's and have lost the first two games of this series. But today, they won...big time. Score was 10-2. At least 3 home runs and lots of rowdy fans cheering them on. Nothing is better then baseball on a hot summer Sunday afternoon.

Its Official...We Own a New Home

We finally closed on this house in Florida. It has really been an experience working with Freddie Mac and the government. The nice part of it all was the closing rep came to us here at our cabin in Mio. Unfortunately, the closes bank holding our money was in Bay City. Nothing seemed easy with this house. But it is a good buy!! And we think we will be very happy being snow birds! Still planning on moving our furniture down mid-June and stay about a week to set up house keeping, then will head back to Michigan until October. Here are a few pictures of the inside of the house, mostly the master bedroom and bath and the living space.

We are working almost non-stop around the cabin. But plan to take a break over the holiday weekend and spend it with my son and his family in Royal Oak. My daughter, Amanda, wants us to keep blogging about life here in the woods of northern Michigan. Believe me, it does have potential of being an adventure living here!

Home Sweet Home....Michigan

When we crossed the state line from Ohio, the new sign Welcome to Pure Michigan was embraced with mix emotions. Glad to have all that driving done with for a while, but also over whelmed with settling down and organizing our lives. Our cabin has boxes and furniture every where....I know we have this or that, but can't seem to find it. So where to start.
Like most things that Andy and I do, we just do it!
Spent 12 hours shopping for new appliances, six gallons of paint, floor tile for both the bath and kitchen, new kitchen counters and Satellite TV. The next day, kitchen floor has been put down and appliances delivered and old ones hauled away. Unfortunately, no satellite TV. It seems we live in a forest (actually, the Huron Nat'l Forest) and the trees are too tall, and too many, for us to receive any of the satellite signals! You would think in this day and age, this would not be a problem and signals should be obtained from any where!! Can you imagine, no TV for the next 5 months? Not even local stations. No Red Box within 30 miles. Now, if I find out that Netflix won't deliver, we may be back on the road.
But closets are cleaned out. Old memories and pictures filed away for future generations to enjoy. All the cob webs removed. RV emptied. One truck load to the dump, one to the local church. And some of our things put away...like our tooth brushes.
Of course, we do have all summer. Although, it may take longer then that!

We left the Virginia/Baltimore area today. Heading home to Michigan.
Driving through the northwestern part of Maryland. This is a beautiful area of rolling hills, little population and limited traffic. We are loving it after spending five days in the congested east coast! This area takes you through the Allegheny Mt's.....up and down, up and down. It is a very narrow piece of Maryland. Traveling on I-68 if you reach your hands out on both sides of the car, one hand could touch Pennsylvania to the north and the other hand could touch West Virginia to the south =).

Our ten-and-a-half month "Living the Dream Traveling Journey" appears to be coming to an end. When we are done, we will have visited 42 states and 3 Canadian Provinces; put over 40,000 miles on the truck; replaced or repaired 7 tires; lost one hub cab; needed new brakes; lost our crapper hose on the highway; bent the stairs when cutting the ditch to sharp; and so much more!

The end does come with some sadness. Waking up in a new city or state every few days is unexplainable how this experience has been! The USA is a beautiful, diverse country. We've seen everything from mountains to deserts, oceans to craters, glaciers to canyons, farmland to busy city high rises and sometimes, vast amounts of nothingness. And....we've seen it all in different kinds of weather and temperatures! Although we were lucky enough to miss serious storms (no hurricanes, no tornados) but did manage to have our share of rain and snow storms. A few times we even had the furnace and AC on within 24 hours.

Even though we plan to "park" our mobile home in one spot for a few months, we are no where near the end of our journey!

So stay tuned. I will continue to blog. We have more plans and travels coming up.

Graduation

Jennifer graduated today from George Mason University. She received a masters in education and graduated with a 4.00!! We couldn't be more proud of her. She accomplished this all by herself, working full time as a teacher here in northern Virginia.
The ceremony was lovely but took three days to finish....more like three hours, but Andy wanted me to write that! We have all sat through commencement. I passed the time by taking pictures, of everything. Exactly 85 pictures. Lucky for you all I didn't post them.

Back in Virginia

We are in Petersburg, VA, just south of Richmond. Sailed through Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina! These areas are full of magnolia trees beginning to bloom. But once we crossed the state line into Virginia, the trees pretty much disappeared.

Petersburg is known for the longest siege of the Civil War occurring here, lasting 10 months and climaxing in the downfall of the Confederacy.

Not long after the war ended, Mary Logan, wife of Union commander General John Logan, witnessed a group of schoolgirls placing flowers on the graves of Petersburg defenders at the Old Blandford Church. Deeply moved when she saw the ritual repeated the next year, she related the story to her husband who took steps that ultimately led to the observance of Memorial Day as a national holiday. I love these stories!

We are wondering if winter is back? Temperature at 10:00 am was 84 degrees in Florence South Carolina, the thermometer dropped to 63 as we crossed into Virginia. Not liking it too much. We haven't had long pants on since Texas!

Knee High By The......

We are now in South Carolina, about 40 miles south of the North Carolina state line. We are truly in the "south". They still fly the Confederate flag every where, the local high school was practicing spring football in 84 degree heat, and the corn fields are already knee high!

We are only driving about 250-300 miles a day. Need to arrive in the Virginia area by Friday. This is just a "destination drive". Kinda boring. We may be heading into cooler weather; more clouds today and cooler nights, where we have had the windows open while sleeping. But I am not complaining....yet. We heard upper Michigan had snow last weekend! And we will be in upper Michigan come next week.

Home Update....

Finally....the house contract now has the correct name! All papers have been signed and agreed upon. The home inspection took place today and NO Chinese dry wall!! This was our biggest concern since the newer homes in Florida have shown to have this imported product. Nothing indicated this type of dry wall was used in our home so it was not recommended we do actual sample testing requiring cutting 5" squares out of the walls at $250.00 per each sample! That could be costly and take another few weeks to get back the results. We feel comfortable with our inspector and like this house more then the last time we were here. Also, the government replaced all the carpet and painted every room. This makes the home move-in ready for us. Now we just wait for the closing which should be before June 1st. We hope to move all our furniture down mid-June, stay for about a week, then come back for those beautiful Michigan summers. We already purchased our new appliances that will be delivered at the time we move in. Things seem to be falling in place. We are very excited!
Tomorrow we are hitting the road. Heading up the east coast to Virginia/DC area for Jennifer's graduation. All this house business has put us behind on our traveling schedule and we are not sure how much we will be able to see along the way. Her graduation ceremony is on Saturday. But hopefully, we will have new photos of something!

The Wedding!

The wedding went off without a hitch! Except for the "hitching" of the happy couple.

The 50% prediction of rain only threaten, but never materialized. The cloudy sky did make for interesting pictures. But the wind was wicked! The girls and I paid money for our wind blown hair styles! A fun crowd of old high school and college friends, great food and all the family gathered together, made for a memorable weekend.

Come Sunday afternoon, Andy and I were exhausted! We hosted both the rehearsal dinner and a post-wedding breakfast at our rented beach house and invited all the guests. Those boys can eat! We felt it was the least we could do for all those who traveled down to Florida. Actually, it was fun! Andy took all these posted pictures, so he is not posing with me in any of them. Thank goodness Jennifer got a photo with her camera or all of you might think he didn't show up! I know the professional photographer got many family pictures of us though!

We are still going forward with the house. We signed the papers from the governments counter-offer. Now waiting for them to sign off, then we can have the home inspection. It has been a lengthy process since all the papers had our name as LONG, and we would not sign until it was changed to LANG. Imagine that? Yeah, they (the governments representatives) couldn't believe we wouldn't sign either! Therefore, it looks like we will be hanging around in Florida until that inspection takes place. Not really complaining since the weather has been 90 degrees, sunny,hot and humid. My kind of weather.