Quinn’s # 4

This entry will try to catch up with what has been happening this fall.  We have been busy with fall chores and visiting family.

Here is a photo of one of Marcia’s flower gardens in full fall colors.

We made a journey to Whitewater River Campground in October.  It is a nice campground and the best part is it is only about ten miles from Brian & Jennifer’s.

Here is part of the crew on a trail along the river.

Brian, Dewey, Cole & Quinn

Marcia, Jennifer & Alyssa

After this trip the Melton’s came up to the farm so the boys could pick out their pumpkins.

Cole & Quinn in the pumpkin patch

Then we went back to Noblesville to attend Cole’s school’s grandparents day.  We had a great time.  We stayed overnight because the next day was Quinn’s 4th birthday celebration. 

The cake is ready and Quinn looks excited.

The candles were lit and Quinn got them all in one shot.

  Quinn got lots of presents and we had a great time watching him open them. 

This is a rocket he got which blasts off when you jump on the air bladder which shoots it up into the air a long way.

A great shot of Quinn, Cole and Dad working on one of Quinn’s presents.

We had a great time with the boys and Brian, Jennifer and Alyssa.  We enjoy the time we get to spend with them.

Brimley State Park & MATT

We moved across the bridge into the UP(ah it feels like home) and on to Brimley State Park.  Brimley is just a few miles from Sault Ste Marie, MI which is why we decided to stay there.  We had never stayed at this park before but the attraction on this particular occasion was MATT.  Matt was travelling through on his way from Toronto to Minnesota and this was a stopping point for him.  We had made plans to meet up for a couple of days.  It was really good to see him.  We had a nice time visiting and just catching up.

The trees were just beginning to show their colors.  There was one in the campground that was still green except for the ends of all of the branches and they were bright red.

We took a walk along the beach and you can see the Sault from the campground.

Matt had some major news for us.  He and Seri both have gotten jobs in Houghton at Michigan Tech.  Seri has a research position at Tech and Matt will be working for the Forest Service on a project for them.   We are so happy for them both finding jobs in the same place.

We went into the Sault for some sight seeing and had a nice time.  We saw some ships in the locks and toured the historical museum.  Here is Matt with Mom.

Here is one of Matt and Dad.

We really enjoyed our time with Matt.  We were sorry that Seri was not able to join us.  But now that they will both be in Houghton we will have a reason to visit the UP more often.  That sounds like a win-win deal.  We get to see the kids and the UP both.

Sleeping Bear and Petosky State Parks

We got to Sleeping Bear on a Thursday around noon expecting to get a site for a few days, but it was not to be.  The park was full because it had recently been voted as the most beautiful National Park by Good Morning America viewers.  We were able to find a private campground just outside the park so we could easily visit several historic and scenic sites.  It is a truly beautiful park. 

This is view looking across the dunes from the highest point above Lake Michigan 450 feet above the water.  This is just one of the views along the must see Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. 

At this stop on the Scenic Drive you can walk out on a 1.5 mile trail through the dunes exploring the dune formations and plant life.

The highlight of the dunes walk is reaching this overlook high above the lake.  Sleeping Bear is a beautiful park we would recommend to everyone.

This is the view from our side window in the campground at Petosky State Park.  What else can I say?  (A picture is worth at least one thousand of my words.)

I love this picture of the sun reflecting off the waves.

The sun had just dropped below the horizon giving this colorful combination of water, sunlight and clouds.  Petosky is another of Michigan’s great parks.

Ludington State Park

Leaving Hoffmaster we meandered up the coast of Lake Michigan.  We had a relatively easy drive to Ludington State Park.  The town of Ludington is an old town with lots of ties to the timber and shipping industries.  They also mined sand from the dunes and it looks like there is still some kind of activity in the area of the dunes next to the park.

The park has three campgrounds and was fairly busy for this time of year.  There is a lot of fishing here so many of the campers were fishermen.  The first picture is of our campsite.

I mentioned earlier that there is a lot of fishing here.  The marina’s in Ludington were full of charter boats as well as some pretty nice yachts.  We went into town one night for dinner and enjoyed a good meal at an old Italian restaurant right down town.  I believe the name of the restaurant was Luciano’s.  I neglected to take my camera so I don’t have any photos of the downtown.

The other part of the fishing is the salmon which come to the river in the fall and swim upstream.  They were just starting their journey when we were there.  There were some fishermen in the mouth of the river where it enters Lake Michigan.  It did not look like they were catching many but we did see a couple with fish.  The biggest obstacle for the fish is about a mile upstream near our campground.

 

The fish cannot jump this dam and there is not a fish ladder for them.  We saw a whole school of them right below the sign in the bottom of the picture.  They were just maintaining their positions in the water.  We did not get to see any of them trying to jump the dam.  The young lady in the camp store said it was a bit too warm yet for them to really start their run.

The next day we went for a walk along the river and then up on what was termed “Ridgeline Trail”.  It was definitely on a ridge.  The views were great.

 

This as the view towards Ludington.  You can just barely see the lighthouse in the distance on the end of the jetty.  Maybe this one will show it better.

Looking the opposite direction this is the view.

Moving on down the trail to the lowlands along the river we encountered this deer.

Moving a little further along the trail I encountered this dear.

Ludington was not our favorite Michigan park but it was still very nice.

P J Hoffmaster State Park

Hoffmaster State Park near Muskegon, Michigan. The campground was partially full when we arrived on Sunday but we still had a good choice of sites to pick from. By Sunday night it looked more like the photo below. Just the way we like it.

We took a trail from the campground which followed this little stream. It meandered through the park and the dunes. It was a nice hike.

Eventually the stream ends up at Lake Michigan. This is where it flows into the lake. It would be a perfect place for Cole & Quinn to play.

The beach runs for a long way in either direction from where the little stream empties into the lake.

This is the walk down to the lake. It does not look very steep but my old legs could feel the effects of walking up it in the sand.

This shot is from the beach looking up at the dunes.

The sun is sinking low in the sky and makes for a nice picture shining across the lake.

Here is another shot of the campground as we were walking back to our site from the beach.

We have stayed at this campgound before and like to come back from time to time. It is a comfortable place to stay. Muskegon is only a few miles away if we need something. We stayed here when we came up here to look at 5th wheels a little over four years ago. The dealer where we purchased the Dancer is in Muskegon and we usually make a stop there when we are here. This was not our first visit here and probably not our last.

Barn Project Almost Complete

We have been very busy working on the barn.  Marcia has been working hard at the landscaping and patching.  She has been seeding grass, putting in sidewalk blocks and patching and tuck pointing the old concrete.  While she has been doing this I have worked on the wiring, building a door for the east end of the barn, and just trying to get everything finished.

Here are a few photos to show our progress.  The first is the old barn with siding removed.

This is the beginning of Timmie's new barn.

As we continued to put the barn back together.

Next we put two coats of paint on all of the new siding and touched up the trim boards.  We had put the trim boards up already painted because it is really really high up at the peak.  The door company got the overhead door put in last week.

Here is another view from a different angle.

Mom and I have worked very hard on this project but we really like the outcome.  The Dancer is safely put into its new home waiting for our next outing.  Timmie loves his new home as well.  We have just a few things to finish up yet this fall and some fence to move next summer and it will be done.

I have one more picture for Cole and Quinn.  They have been pretty concerned about their pumpkins so here is a picture of the pumpkin patch.

Hope you all enjoyed the update.  I will try to get some pictures from our fall trip up north for the next issue.

Summer Project: Barn renovation

I have been pretty busy this summer.  That's my excuse for not posting more blog entries.  We have had a lot of things going on this summer as well as doing a major renovation and remodeling on the old bank barn.  We started by taking all of the siding off the west end of the barn.

We also added a new lean to on the north side of the barn for Timmie.  He had to have a new place to stay when we decided to use his old place for our new RV storage unit.  Here is the skeleton with the roof on and the new roof we put on the old section also.

Then we had to remove the old floor in the back part of the barn.  This shows the new look with the floor gone.

After all of the deconstruction we got started on the reconstruction.  This shows the new wood siding being put up.

As some of you know, I do not climb well or at all.  That is why we have a checkerboard look to the new siding.  We thought we would paint the boards for the highest part before we put them up cause its a long way up there.  I guesstimated from the safety of the ground that it was approximately 8' from the bottom siding boards to the very peak of the barn.  With that erroneous information in hand, I thought we could get two boards out of each 16' siding board and it would cover the whole center section of the peak.  Well you guessed it, the longest boards were almost 10' so my well conceived plan had a slight flaw.  There were not enough painted boards to fill the entire center section so we have a checkerboard.  We will try to solve that issue when we paint the rest of the siding.

The north side of the old barn and Timmie's new home were sided with metal siding.  Due to the fact that the north side gets little or no sun, the old wood siding would mildew.  We decided to use metal even though it was not in keeping with the original structure.

Timmie really likes his new home.  Yesterday afternoon I was hauling top soil up to put over the fill dirt we used to get to a mowable grade around the new building.  I had opened the gate at the back of Timmie's pasture to save time as it is much shorter going that way to get the fill dirt.  Well we had our third rain shower of the day late yesterday afternoon and I decided three times getting wet was enough and called it quits for the day.  I put things away, fed Timmie and went to the house to grill some chicken for supper.  This morning when I woke up I was lying in bed thinking, I forgot to close that gate last night, OH OH.  I went out and sure enough there are Timmie tracks around the barn.  I am wondering if he got into the road or where he might be.  Well, I went around to the back of the barn and there he was standing by the door to his new home waiting to be put back in his pen.  Gotta love that Timmie.

One of the things we did this summer was make a trip to Brown County.  We took the camper and stayed in the park campground.  Even though the weather was hot, Alyssa, Jennifer, Brian, Cole and Quinn came to visit us and spend the day at the park.  We had a great time with them.

That's all I have for today.  I will try to give some more updates on the barn as we progress.

Sleeping Bear

We started out on a long trip going all the way to Goshen, Indiana.  We were attending the Heartland RV Rally.  It was put on by the Heartland Owners Club and the Heartland Manufacturing Co.  They are the maker of our Sundance fifth wheel.  We attended seminars on various rv related items which were very informative.  There was also a lot of food and entertainment.  On Saturday the 18th we went to the Heartland main campus in Elkhart for a tour of the factory.  Going through the plant and seeing the units in the various stages of construction was very interesting.  They come in one end of the building as a metal frame and exit the other end as a completed unit.  It takes two days to build a unit and they produce about 14 a day in that plant.

From Goshen we left Sunday morning and drove pretty much straight north to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  We had reservations at the Platte River Campground within the park.  We got set up and went in search of the Melton Clan.  They were camped in the loop next to ours.  We found a couple of young boys that looked familiar running through the woods, their campsite was nearby.  

There was a trail leading from the campground to the beach about a mile away so we headed that direction.  It would have been a little shorter if Grandpa had not went the wrong way on the trail but we caught it soon and got turned around.  The trail followed an old railroad bed that was used to transport logs to the little bay where the beach was.  Here is a picture of the shoreline with Grandma taking a walk.

This is a picture of the shoreline looking the other direction.  There is a natural little bay here formed by the dunes jutting out into Lake Michigan.

Cole looks like he is having fun playing in the sand along the waters edge.

Quinn was hauling sand up to a project he had going on the beach.

We had a marshmellow roast and you can see everyone is intent on getting them done just right.

Brian says his looks just right but Cole is not sure.

Cole showing his marshmellows done to perfection.

Quinn taking care of a marshmellow.

Sleeping Bear is a beautiful park and one we will no doubt return to.  We took a drive the next day along the scenic route and it was just as it's name implies.  There were overlooks and trails through the dunes with lots of wildflowers in bloom.  I forgot to take my camera so unfortunately there are no pictures.

We had quite a bit of rain so the last two nights we had what Quinn called snuggle nights.  Brian, Jennifer and the boys stayed with us in the Sundance.  We had a great time and hope everyone else did as well.