Scouting Trip & Old Engine Show

The past week was quite active for me. I took a scouting trip to lower Michigan to check out houses and topography, and attended another old engine show. A few changes were made to the web site as well.

Pam has been checking Michigan properties on-line for a while now. While we like Heart House, we have been considering a move “Up North” to an area with more woods, a few lakes, and fewer agricultural odors. A Michigan relocation would put us closer to Felicity in upper New York state, and also makes a great jumping off point for travels in Canada and the eastern U.S. Location is everything, though, and as we’re not familiar with the upper part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, it was time to take a scouting trip.

I concentrated on the upper third of the state, from Mackinaw City down to Ludington. I visited areas on both the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan coasts. Total mileage for the trip came out to 1,925 miles.

As with all states, some areas are more attractive than others. The central portions are relatively flat which makes them less desirable. Eastern portions have more wooded rolling hills and some very attractive small lakes. On the western side, Ludington has a great beach and the nearby Reed City was one of the more attractive towns I drove through.

Along the way I drove past several properties Pam had identified as potentials in various areas. Alas, the listing photos do not always give a good indication of the neighborhoods and overall condition of the homes. Of three that had potential appointments with realtors, only one turned out to be worth the effort.

This older Craftsman style home sits on almost 6 acres and has over 3,500 square feet of living space. The upstairs could be a separate living space (for Pam’s sister Becky) as it has a bath, kitchen, and a couple bedrooms. The full listing and more photos can be found at this link. (Link opens in a new window.)

The realtor was Amanda Hunt, professional and with knowledge of the area. I enjoyed meeting and speaking to her as well as the information she was able to provide about the house and community.

I had mixed responses to this house. While it has several appealing features, there are some drawbacks that would be expensive to rectify. For example, there is moisture in the basement, possibly due to the wet weather the Midwest has been experiencing, but there are no gutters to channel water away from the house. Gutters, plus a new roof and tuck-pointing the chimneys, would run around $23K – $25K. Both kitchens and bathrooms would need updating, and we know from experience what kinds of problems that work might uncover. Do we really want to take on another fixer upper?

The house is part of an estate settlement and the price is unlikely to come down. As appealing as the house is, for location, style, and size, it is more of a financial burden than we want to take on this time around. We will continue to monitor the listing and see if the price drops as time goes by and if so we may reconsider.

I checked out a couple lake properties as well. There are some very pretty lakes in Michigan! The downside of most of these is they have many steps / stairs and are quite small, mostly designed as weekend or vacation properties and not full-time homes.

I enjoyed the trip, confirming some areas to search in and other areas to ignore. The roads were uniformly good, much better than Iowa roads, and services are available in larger communities within reasonable distances from the properties I drove past. I consider the trip worthwhile and a success.

Returning home, yesterday I attended the Root River Antique Power show in Spring Valley for the second year in a row. While I am not going to bore you with a lot of details, there were some new activities not present last year, and a few more crawler tractors were present.

I have created a video with clips of various sights, sounds, and activities of this year’s show. Run time is 8:54

Speaking of videos, I have added a pair of YouTube pages to the web site with links to the various videos I have posted over the last few years just in case anyone, including myself, would like to review them again without having to scroll through pages and pages of past posts. Here is the link.

I’ve also changed the Cats and Dogs pages to reflect Blondie’s passing and mentioning the three latest cats, now about a year old.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Thank you Cindy and Deb for sending an animal condolence card. Thanks Julie, Becky, and Dianne for sharing the sadness of the passing of a long-lived pet. There is less laundry without Blondie in the house, but I can’t seem to change my habit of checking on her every half hour. Because, of course, there is nothing to check on anymore…

While Himself was busy driving in Michigan, I kept myself occupied rather than dwelling on the sadness. The stairwell to the second floor, in particular, needed deep cleaning (cripes, I dug out a few Christmas spruce needles from under the tread pads). The cats have been busy taking apart ribbon trim along these steps, requiring glue and tacking. Chipped paint on the front of the treads was repainted. To mix it up, I also climbed the ladder [inside] to clean and dust the high shelves in the parlour, and then up on the ladder [outside] to paint a second coat on part of the ceiling of the wrap around porch. And when I got bored, I bathed both dogs.

Happy Trails.