OUR Property

We are now the proud owners of 80 acres!  

I'll start from the beginning.  Last year some time we started looking for some land to relocate to in the future.  We were looking for a larger tract of land with no improvements so that we could build a new house and have some extra land as well.  We started looking in the same area that we live in now, but didn't find much in our price range.  One day we stumbled across some property on the internet in the Upper Peninsula and noticed that the property up there was much more affordable.  We were originally looking for at least 20 acres, but now realized we could probably afford more.

After months of searching, we hadn't found anything that really peeked our interest too much.  We were planning a trip in the early part of this year and were hoping to have a few properties to look at when we visited.   Then, one day we stumbled across 80 acres in the Houghton are of the UP and it looked pretty good.  It was mostly wooded and had some more open areas and some wetter sections.  We had just a few questions, so we promptly emailed the listing agent and found out that the acreage is on a dead end road and kind of in the middle of nowhere, yet still has electric by the road.  And, to top it all off, they actually plow the road during the winter.  Suddenly, we thought we might have found what we were looking for.

We did a little more investigation on the location and the surrounding areas.  The property is about 10 miles from the modern conveniences (gas, grocery, hospital, etc.) in Lake Linden and about 20-30 minutes from Houghton.  The property is literally in the middle of nowhere.  The dead end road that the property lied on was sort of the dead end of the area, there's nowhere to go beyond that.   What's very cool is that across the way is state owned land with a road on it that's about 1/2 mile long and leads directly to a beach on Lake Superior!  So, we get privacy, low traffic, and easy access to water! We had some concerns about the weather, as most of the UP gets lots and lots of snow.  Later we found out that the area where the property is doesn't really get all that much snow because of the land topography in the area....but, it still gets more snow than we're used to here!

Next thing to do was to motor on up to the UP.  We took a couple of days off of work and in addition to the weekend we had four days in the area.  It took us about four and a half hours to get to the general area and we found a cheap cottage to stay in for a few days.  We looked at the property on a Thursday afternoon and walked on about a 1/3 of it with snowshoes.  There are two open meadow areas and most of the rest is trees.  The south/north boundary of the property is a half mile long and the other side is a quarter mile.  We were in heaven (or as close as you can get on earth).  The property is just beautiful.  There are tons of white and red pine, some aspen, and many spruce trees.  There aren't really many hardwoods but there are some planted apple trees and one or two cherry trees.  As it turns out, the western quarter is a bog.  It is full of tamarack trees and, according to the former owners, there a pitcher plants growing as well.  We had about an hour on the property before it got dark and we walked the length of the property from north to south and that's about all we had time for.  On Friday, we drove around the area and got the lay of the land.  We also went all the way to the tip of the peninsula to Copper Harbor and saw all kinds of things.

When we got home, we had to decide what we wanted to do.  We found out that there was another couple looking at the property the weekend after we were so that created a really stressful week since we were very interested.  As it turned out, the other couple wasn't in a position to buy.  We put in an offer on the property right before Christmas and got a counter offer the same day.  We settled on a price and had an accepted offer for our Christmas present.  We decided not to close until the middle of February so we would have a little more time to save up some extra money before we had to start the payments.  We just got the closing all wrapped up on Friday and are really excited.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to visit until it gets a little warmer.  We will  go up to visit over Memorial day weekend (if we don't figure out some way to get up there earlier).  Stay tuned for some more pictures once we visit again and have more time to get around on the property.

- Tim

Here are some pictures that were taken by the realtor and then some that we took in December:

Apple trees in fall and building left from original homestead.

Part of the front 20, it's snowing!

The property is outlined in red and you can see how close Lake Superior is on the bottom right corner!