An Autumn Visit

Usually during this time of year we take a week long road-trip vacation to celebrate our anniversary. This year, due to our amazing girl Flora, we felt best foregoing the week long trip. Too hard to travel for that amount of time with a 1-mo old, 2 dogs, ourselves and luggage. Instead, we went out for a nice dinner on our anniversary, and then this past weekend, we took our last trip for the season up to White Sky Woods. We did just one night. We left the dogs at home with my Mom who watched them, and we headed out early Saturday morning, all packed up and with baby in the back seat. Since the heat in our camper is somewhat unreliable when it comes to providing a constant temperature, we felt it safest to stay at a hotel, and then spend the days at our property. On the way up, there was snow! The night before had left about 4 inches of snow in central U.P., but once we got closer to the Keweenaw, there was no snow and lots of fall color! Since the climate zone on the peninsula is the same as where we live here in WI, it was prime color viewing for those fall leaves. We headed directly to White Sky Woods. Wow! It looked so different from our last visit over Labor Day weekend. It's always wonderful, but the colors on the trees were just amazing. The color was from the ground up. Lots of leaves on the ground, colorful grasses, and brilliantly colored trees. The most impressive were the tamaracks, which were a bright sunny yellow color. On saturday we hiked our cleared (okay - semi-cleared) trails and spent a little time in the camper for Flora's feeding since it started to drizzle outside. When it got dark, we checked into our hotel. We ordered pizza from a local place - it was delicious...maybe some of the best delivery pizza I ever had. Later, Tim went swimming while Flora and I watched.

The next day we went back to our property and decided to do some off trail exploring. Tim carried Flora in the front pack both days, which worked out great. She loved it, the motion lulls her to sleep. We found some areas of our property that have older hardwoods, along with Cedar and different types of conifers. Tim's eye caught one of our forest creatures. A blue-spotted salamander! Cool looking little salamander. We found a dilapidated hunting shack that a tree fell on. It appeared the shack was built around the tree. Hmm. We then headed back to the camper. While I fed Flora, Tim picked lots of apples! We have tons of apple trees with a variety of apples. The best looking apples were Golden Delicious apples. He also picked a lot of apples that will be better suited for baking. So, this week, I have a project on my hands! I will be dehydrating a portion of the apples for healthy snacking, not sure about the rest yet. Before we left, we also talked to the neighbors for an hour of so. They told us about 2 wolf encounters they had this summer. Overall, it was another great trip to White Sky Woods! Can't wait to go back...

Back pasture.

In the forest.

All bundled up!

Snow! On the way up, but no snow at the property :)

Spotted blue salamander.

Moderate Bed Rest in the U.P.

Wow - life's plans have taken a bit of a different direction this past week. At my last Dr. appointment my blood pressure was up, so now I'm on "moderate" bed rest. This means that I'm supposed to be at home relaxing, sitting, no errands, no chores, etc. Thankfully, my employer has been so flexible with me and is allowing me to work from home full-time on my laptop. Working from home is actually going very well, feeling productive and accomplished. Also, at the last appointment, we found out that our dear daughter is still quite comfortable in her breech position. We did a lot of homeopathic attempts to have her turn prior to this revelation, and nothing worked. So, our next option was to go in for an external version to have them attempt to manually turn her. They tried with all their might for 45 minutes and she didn't want to budge. So, at this time, she's still breech. Unless she turns on her own, we will be scheduling a c-section. This has been a bit defeating to me, but I understand that we need to do what is the best route for safe delivery and that our goal outcome is a healthy baby! We have all the love in the world waiting for her when she arrives!

Over labor day weekend was our last opportunity to go visit our favorite place before baby arrives, White Sky Woods. We left on Friday evening so we would have a few full days instead of traveling Saturday morning. Our trip was so well needed. Since I'm on moderate bed rest, I did nothing but relax. We read, listened to NPR, played games, napped. Tim finished one last thing on the outhouse to have it winter ready. It was a great weekend to unwind, relax physically and mentally, and slow down the pace of life before our baby arrives. Here is my favorite photo from the weekend. I took this when I woke up from an outdoor nap under the apple tree. The sun was shining so brilliantly illuminating the leaf. Oh, we also saw our friend - Paulie the Porcupine! He was chilling out up in one of the Aspen trees.

Blueberries!

We returned Sunday night from another great, and extended 3-day weekend at White Sky Woods. It was rainy on Friday and a bit overcast on Saturday, but Sunday was simply amazing. 70 and sunny - blue as blue sky. The Sunday theme must have been blue. Blue sky - blueberries. We discovered a month or so ago that there are patches of blueberry bushes on our property...but until they came ripe just recently, we didn't know how many! Wild blueberries - everywhere! They are sweeter and smaller than the grocery store variety - simply delicious. We had a couple of gallon pails up there for just this type of event, so we went picking. After over an hour of picking, we had a full gallon of blueberries. The dogs also ate their fair share - straight off the bush! We have the blueberries home now and all the supplies to make jam. We will reap the benefits from our beautiful day of picking all winter long :) UPDATE: Tim made 10 half-pints of blueberry jam and we still have more blueberries left over which I will make blueberry bran muffins with and freeze so we can thaw and eat as we please.

Unique Plants

We are blessed to have our piece of paradise in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Although we haven't even seen all our property yet (or is it possible to ever!), we've been able to do some exploring! Tim's seen more than me since he's not pregnant and has much more energy and mental-will to take him around :) A few trips back, we had Tim's Mom, Aunt, & Uncle visiting and Tim when exploring with his Uncle while I napped. Tim came back with pictures of plants that many people might never encounter including lady slippers, rare mushrooms, and the carnivorous plant - Pitcher Plant. I've never seen lady slippers in the wild, but last year Tim and I did see Pitcher Plants in a bog we visited in Minnesota. What a unique plant! It produces a sticky type of material which bugs will land in and then the plant digests the bug. Amazing such thing could even grow in Upper Michigan where 6 months out of the year there is snow on the ground! When Tim saw the pitcher plant on our property, he even saw it when it was blooming. What a beautiful sight!

I saw the pictures and knew that next year I would be able to go back and see them with my own eyes. Well, somehow on our last trip Tim convinced me and our visitors that it was a short/easy trip. Not without complaint, we FINALLY got to a pitcher plant (he had marked it on the GPS). I was the only one complaining...my 8 months pregnant body didn't want anything to do with the trip, and my mind really got at me. It wasn't too bad of a hike for our friends or dogs, but was a different story for me! I can't quite paint a good picture of the trip, but imagine being stuck in a dense jungle with no path to follow. That's what this was like...but less tropical :) Looking back now, it was kinda funny...but I definitely pushed myself a bit too much that day. Anyhow, we found the picther plant, and it was beautiful! We also came across many other cool things - living and dead. Several deer skeleton's and also a pretty big pile of poops...maybe bear? We saw Cedar Trees, Spruce, Tamarak, and some hardwoods. Quigley found himself a deer foot to run around with, so he was happy as pie.

It's simply amazing how many different things you can find when you are looking on just a small piece of land in the realm of an entire region, country, continent, world! I recently read an article that reminded me of how cool it is to discover something. Explorers found the largest pitcher plant yet. It can eat rats! Here's the article: Giant Meat-Eating Plant Found

Here also are some pictures taken at our favorite place - White Sky Woods!

Cedar Trees

Pitcher Plants on the property. This is a grouping of several with some of them flowering!

Pink Lady Slipper on the property.

The Beach

We spent some time at the beach down the road from the property.  There was no one else there - it was about 80 degrees.  I take it the beach is rarely frequented since it's completely unmarked and we've only once seen someone there.  Tim decided to go in the water.  Let's remember, this is Lake Superior.   As suspected, it was COLD water.  The dogs enjoyed running in the water and of course came back to the blanket I was sitting on to come and shake off - after they rolled around in the sand.  Here are some pictures of the beach:

Paulie the Porcupine

We were up at the property this weekend.  It was a wonderful trip!  The weather was sunny and 68-75 degrees - beautiful!  When we got there, we were surprised to see all the apple (and other fruit trees?) in bloom. Lots of new ground cover and flowers were coming up too.  Drawf dogwood, ferns, starflowers, violets, and stagham moss in the wooded areas.  Hawkeye, raspberries, possibly a daisy of sorts (hadn't blossomed yet) in the sunny areas.   Marsh marigolds, iris (not in bloom yet), unique mushrooms, and more violets in the bog area.  Just amazing!   We find beauty everywhere on the property.  While we were sitting under one of the blossoming fruit trees, Tim spotted something in one of the aspen trees near by.  He came running back for the camera, and we took pictures throughout the evening.    It's a porcupine!  We watched him up in the tree top, sleeping, observing us, and eating.   I am amazed by porcupines!  I guess I never really seen one in the wild, and up in the tree it was a slow, docile creature.    Of course, I would never want a close encounter with one, but I'm happy to have at least one who lives on our property!  We named him Paulie the Porcupine :)

What's Up?!

No excuses, but I haven't posted since APRIL!! That's simply too long. So, what have we been up to? We went up to the property two weekends ago, we simply didn't want to wait too long to go up again so we decided that we would do another quick weekend. It was great. We rode our bikes with dogs in tow (on leashes running next to us) down to Lake Superior. The ride there was good, but the ride back was too much for me. My body said "I'm too tired - you stop now." :) I pushed the bike back the last 1/8 mile. We built a fire and enjoyed nature that night. We chilled out on Sunday morning because we were simply too exhausted. In one day we cleared a path on the front 10 acres. It was a lot of work for Tim because he had to use the machette to clear some areas. We are happy how it turned out and plan to continue making some trails. Our next trip up is a long weekend, so we have more time to do things and more time to relax!!! Ahhhh......relax. We haven't had a day off of work since 2009. It will be nice to have an extended weekend. I may want more after that :)

The next weekend we celebrated Mother's Day at our house. My Mom and Dad and Tim's Mom came over. We had a burrito bar and then showed them the video of our 20 week ultrasound. Oh yea! I forget to mention that. We had the 20 week ultrasound. We found out if baby is a boy or girl. Well, we showed the 4 minute video to our parents and they all guessed boy. Well, SURPRISE - it's a girl!! We were surprised too, Tim and I both felt boy. The ultrasound was great, but she was being a little stinker...turning away and moving all over the place. The Dr. was able to get most of the measurements he needed to be sure she was all on track, but he didn't get a good enough look at her heart. We have another Ultrasound in early July that he will take a better look at her heart.....and hopefully she cooperates! There were no worries, so we are very happy about that. Since she was moving all over the place, from what he could get a look at he felt that baby is a girl! I guess we will for sure know by next ultrasound :) Exciting times! We also showed our parents some video we've shot of the land.

My birthday came and went on Monday, 5/11. I'm 30 now - wow! Shocking, but acceptable. This weekend we have errands to run and will also be going to the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. I recently started working with a gal that works there, she was in my media class. Since Tim and I love gardens, we thought it would be nice to support this local group. This will be our first visit with membership. We haven't been there for about 3 years, I'm looking forward to it!

Hope all is well with our family and friends!

Spring is in the Air!

Hi Everyone! I am happy to report that spring is here! At least for yesterday and today! It's 70 degrees outside and wonderful! I opened up all the windows in the house to get that winter stuffiness out, it's so refreshing! With spring comes blooms.  Our tulips are coming up, but no flowers yet.  Some perennials are showing their green and the garlics we planted late fall are up and rising!  Of course, so are all the weeds.  How is it that some plants will die off during a harsh winter....but not weeds!  They are persistent, year after year.  I have crab grass growing in my strawberry patch, and in random places in the garden.  This weekend, some spring cleaning is on the list.  We also have to start getting together our camping materials.  We found a cheap, retro hardtop camper for sale that we purchased and will be taking to our land next time we are up.  It's not deluxe by any means, but has what we need.  Bed, storage, stovetop, and heater.  The heater was the biggest thing since it will allow us to spend nights on the land when otherwise we would have to stay at another place about 30 minutes from the property.  We'll post some pictures once we get it up there, we are pumped to get everything together and go up for our first weekend where we can spend all day and night at the land!

Anyhow, back to spring - here's a picture of the garlic coming up and also of the dogs playing outside! 

Getting Sunburned in the UP (in March!)

This past weekend was the best!  We decided a few weeks ago that if there was a weekend coming up with good weather in the UP we would head up to the property.  We were hoping for anything over 30 degrees, and that happened to be this past weekend! What an awesome time we had!  We left at about 6 AM Saturday morning and got up to the property at about noon after we dropped off our stuff at the cottage we stayed at.  We drove over to the property and were looking around and checking out the area by the road and out walks our immediate neighbor to the North.  We had a good talk with her and her husband and got lots of valuable information on our property and the neighborhood.  After the chat, we had to climb over the 8 foot tall pile of snow on the edge of the property.  (It was particularly deep there because that is where the plow pushes it all).  We thought we walked all over the place on Saturday, but as it turned out we really didn't walk all that far, but it was certainly a work out.  Most of the snow was between 2-3 feet deep, mostly hard and easy to walk on with snowshoes except a few spots where you seemed to sink in a foot.  We saw probably 20 or 30 whitetail deer throughout the day.  (Only two or three on our property, but a herd of about 50-80 hangs out by the neighbors because they feed them).   We were tuckered out and headed back to the cottage.  

Sun coming up in the east.

Looking South, this is the back field which we think is about 5 or more acres.

Fire that Tim built for us to enjoy lunch over.  It smelled so nice like camp and outdoors!

The "tree organizer" - where we hung the stuff we didn't want to carry while we snowshoed.

On Sunday we headed out to the land again.  We were a little more prepared to do some walking than the previous day because we knew better what we were getting in to.  We found a potential building spot for a house when we move up some day, but we will keep looking as we get to know that land more.  The property just seems bigger than we imagined!  Everything seemed bigger than our first tour of the property.  Since we were planning on staying through lunch, we paced PB&J sandwiches, crackers, and lots and lots of water to drink.  Around 12:30 we found a spot to sit.  There was a chair we found, and a big bucket that we flipped over to sit on.  Tim built a fire and ta-da...we had a camp!  We ate and talked about the property.  It was about 45 degrees, with a slight breeze, and was just lovely out!    On the way out we talked to the neighbor again for a while, which was nice!  They seem like very nice people and we are looking forward to getting to know them!

Overall, it was a great weekend and we learned a lot more about the property including more about the trees, landscape and space.   Oh, and regarding the title of the post, I am sunburned!  Between the sun and the snow, I am a bit red in the face!  So, who says you can't get a tan in the U.P. in winter? :)  We can't wait to go back!

-L

A Saturday Surprise!

Today for whatever reason we were up and at 'em by 6:30.  This isn't very unlikely for me, but for Tim, he doesn't even get up this early on the weekdays!  So, we decided that we would run our errands in Appleton this morning rather than later today.  We went in town for breakfast and then quickly realized that retail doesn't usually open until 9 or later.  When we finished eating breakfast it was only 8:30.   We ended up having plenty of places to go, including groceries, new glasses for Tim, and searching for a handheld GPS unit so we can use it while we navigate our new property.  

We came back home, had a yummy lunch, and then I had plenty of grading to do for my teaching gig.  I worked for several hours and completed my tasks so we decided to take advantage of the sunny day and take the dogs for a walk in the neighborhood.  On our way in we grabbed the mail.   To our delight there was a package in the mailbox. Since most the mail we get is bills or junk, we were fascinated....who could it be from?  To our surprise it was from the previous owners of the property in Michigan!  We weren't expecting anything from them so it caught us off guard.  We couldn't wait to get inside and open it.  I quick got in, changed into my slippers and took of all my winter layers so I could open the package.  Tim was just poking along, yet making me wait until he was with me to open the package.

We opened the package and out came 3 books, a handwritten letter, and a magazine article.  2 of the books are about Isle Royale, a National Park which has ferry access from the Keweenaw Peninsula.  We can't wait to go explore the island once we have been up to the property several times, or when we move there!  The Magazine article was also about Isle Royale.  The 3rd book is the History of Jacobsville (where the property is).  I am so pumped to read this!  I am intrigued to learn more about the history of Jacobsville, and possibly someday more history about the original use/owners of the property.    The letter, shared a bit of insight about their love and memories of the property (for the last 30 years I believe).  She also wrote "p.s. the blueberries are great in August."  We suspected their MIGHT be blueberries on the property because of the back bog, but didn't know for sure.  We are excited to search out the blueberries!  Blueberries are one of my favorite berries (nothing tops Strawberries), and the leaves can be dried and used for a delicious, all-natural, hot tea.   Yum!  

We are so excited and feel so blessed to have this property.  We are looking forward to visiting it throughout the seasons, and eventually, making it our full time home!   Thank you to our new friends, for sharing your great books with us!  It was a brilliant surprise and we look forward to having more letters or e-mail between us!

-Lisa

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!

Due North!

Tim and I just returned from a little escape to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I have been to the U.P. before, but wasn't there long enough, nor was I quite mature enough to understand the true beauty that the U.P. has.  Where we went was a very northern area of the U.P. - the Keweenaw Peninsula.  It was just amazing!  Pretty much the entire time we were there it was snowing, but it was a light, gentle snow fall - lake effect.  The peninsula has Lake Superior on the west, north, and east side.  We spent time outdoor snowshoeing as well as spending time in the Houghton/Hancock area.  My favorite areas that we visited was the north west and north east side of the peninsula.  It was so beautiful!  Since the population is smaller, taking in the scenery was easy...we didn't have to fight for a picture, and we rarely crossed paths with other people on the road. When we did, they were locals and usually raised their hand to wave.  Some day, when we achieve our dream of having a homestead, we would like to make it in the northwoods (WI or MI).  The Keweenaw Peninsula was surely a fit for our goals. To the right are some pictures from our travels of the Lake Superior area.  Our trip was the perfect scenery of snow, trees, water, and peace.  -L