Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

Our Ninth Year of Fulltiming in Review

June 29, 2025 marks our ninth year of traveling across this wonderful country in our motorhome as full time travelers. The journey continues to be mostly fun and exciting although we still need to try to remember to not treat our lifestyle as a vacation. Generally, vacations are to a new area for a limited time period, and the urge is to try to squeeze in as many activities and sightseeing destinations as possible. So when we pull into a campsite in a new location for a week, the inclination might be to do a search for the top 10 things to do in that town and fit them all in. Since we are big into hiking, we often use AllTrails, or similar sources, to seek out the best hikes and work those into the plans as well. But our experience has been that maintaining “vacation” pace can work for a few weeks but it is next to impossible to maintain for 52 weeks a year.

We stayed well east of the Mississippi River this past year. The map below shows our route. (Clicking on the link below the map will open up the Google Map I created for the year and permit you to zoom and scroll to better see the route.) Sort of looks like a poorly drawn letter “Y”. I doubt we will ever choose our route with the intention of creating some interesting artwork, but who knows? We camped at 40 different campgrounds, Elks Lodges or parking lots over the past year. Several of the stops where at places we have visited before with the longest stop (175 nights) being at The Great Outdoors in Titusville Florida - but since we now own an RV lot in this resort, it will likely be a common destination over the winter months. Other repeat stops were simply because they are convenient overnight stops along a route we frequently travel.

Click Here to Bring Up Interactive Google Map of 9th Year Travels

Thirty-one of the stops were at places we have not stayed at previously. In all honesty, it’s the opportunity to see a new place that motivates us to continue the travels. We started out year 9 just a few weeks into our 2024 summer plans of visiting the New England area. Exploring the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and portions of interior Maine were quite enjoyable. The three months seemed to go by quickly.

Another month was spent heading south. We should have budgeted more than 8 nights in the Boston and Cape Cod area of Massachusetts but now we know of some decent Elks Lodges in that area to return if we want to explore more. Even some of the simple overnight stops provided for unique experiences. Frackville Pennsylvania was a nice location to get a free tour of the oldest brewery in the country - Yuengling. Even the small town of Wilson North Carolina had some of the most incredible whirligigs we have ever seen.

After our extended stay in Florida for winter, we opted to head through northern Georgia for some excellent hiking before a long stop in Cincinnati to visit with family and then up through Indiana and into Michigan where we end year nine participating in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette on the Upper Peninsula. It has been a full year!

Another style of map I create from all of our stops are “heat maps”. The first one shows all the states we have camped in over the past year. The darker shade of red indicates more nights while light red means we stayed fewer nights. We managed to camp in 18 different states. The second map shows a similar idea but includes all 9 years of our travels. With our stop in Rhode Island, we are now up to 45 states. Since our USA map is nearly completely filled in, I am including one more heat map that is divided down to the county level. We have bumped up our number of counties by 24 over this past year for a total of 295.

Heat Map of Year #9

Heat Map of First 9 Years of Fulltime

Same as Above but Broken Down to County Level

Like a good engineer, I have all sort of data that I keep track of from our travels. I don’t bother to include expenses that we would have if we were living a conventional life in a sticks and bricks house like groceries, dining out or sightseeing costs. But items related to a nomadic lifestyle are included. I have limited the table to just this year and the 5 most recent years to make the chart readable. Prior years data can be found in similar posts I have done at the end of June each year.

Condensed Stats for Last 6 Years

There really isn’t a lot of unexpected findings within the data. We drove the motorhome slightly more than last year but pretty much in line with our typical amount from prior years. Since we tend to enjoy staying at state parks, it was nice to be able to improve on our number of nights spent at them. One thing worth noting about our stays at private RV parks, when we purchased our lot at The Great Outdoors, we knew what the quarterly HOA fees and annual property taxes would be and they had provided what sort of rental income we could expect for our lot if we are not staying there for various times of the year.  Now that we have gone through a year of lot ownership, it turns out that our lot ended up costing us just under $23 per night (including electric) for the 175 nights we stayed there. That’s not bad for a place that has excellent facilities and charges $110 a night for visitors.

For the past few years, I have used our yearly reviews to highlight some excellent hikes or bike rides we have found over the past 12 months. (Our calendar year end reviews highlight our top places we stayed at if exploring by foot or bike aren’t your thing.) We managed to get in roughly 75 hikes over year #9. Chris and I looked over them all, remembering nearly all of them and each voted for our favorites. This year we came up with 8 of them that we feel deserve to be on our list. For each one, I’ll give an overview of the trail, a picture from it and a link to the blog post that fully describes the outing to better show why it made it to the list. In chronological order, here are our top 8 hikes/rides.

• Avalanche Lake Trail - Lake Placid NY

We tackled several nice hikes in the Adirondacks during the two weeks we spent in the area but Avalanche Lake Trail stood out with both its beauty and challenging terrain. There are a few starting points to get to the lake. We picked the one from the Adirondack Loj since it sounded to be the least flooded option during our stay. What started as a nice hike in the woods became steep around the 2.5 mile point as we climb over Avalanche Pass before heading down to the pretty mountain lake. You’ll want to continue along the challenging rock climb along the edge of the lake. There are assorted ladders and stairs in place to scale the larger ones. But the real draw for us was to check out the cantilevered platforms that are in place to get around the sections with only a shear rock face along the lake. Read the blog post, to discover the story behind their name - Hitch-Up Matilda’s. Our out and back hike came in around 12 miles but was well worth the effort.

Blog post with Avalanche Lake Hike

One of the Hitch-Up Matilidas at Avalanche Lake

• Newport Bike Path to Canada - Newport VT

While visiting the area of Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom, we get the mountain bikes out and head north on the Newport Bike Path. It’s a pleasant ride along the shore of a large lake and in 5.5 miles, we make it to the Canadian border in the small town of Beebe. In a few more miles following a combination of bike paths and lightly traveled road we make it to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House. This is a beautiful old building that straddles the  border between Canada and USA. We did a little more sightseeing in the town of Stanstead before retracing our route back into Vermont and out campground. There are easier ways to visit the library but we really enjoyed the 25 miles bike ride and unique sights along the way. 

 

Blog post with Newport Bike Path Ride

Chris Straddles the International Border

• Devils Gulch Trail - Eden VT

A 4.6 mile loop with about 1000 feet of elevation gain in the woods of northern Vermont. Half to the hike is following the Long Trail which extends the length of the state from south to north. While the bulk of this hike was nice, it was the quarter mile portion near the mid point that made it special for us. The trail enters a small canyon area with lots of boulders and extremely lush vegetation at least when we were there. This section is dubbed Devil’s Gulch and was a really neat stretch of the Long Trail. It was somewhat challenging simply because of the wet and mossy nature of the area made for difficult footing but worth the effort to see. 

 

Blog post with Devils Gulch Hike

Chris Hikes Devils Gulch

• Lamoille Valley Rail Trail - Vermont

While staying in St Johnsbury for a month, we found several rail trails that were fun to explore. The LVRT stuck out as a more enjoyable bike ride with some beautiful scenery and unlike the Ammonoosuc River Trail and Presidential Range Trail, the LVRT does not permit motorized vehicles so the trail surface was excellent. This 94 mile rail trail runs the width of Vermont from Lake Champlain to St Johnsbury. We did two different 22 mile sections of the trail by bicycle and found all sorts of interesting things to see along the way. We started our visits at trailheads in West Danville and Hardwick but from our experience, any portion of this trail is likely to be wonderful. 

 

Blog post with first LVRT bike ride.

Blog post with second LVRT bike ride

 

Train Sized Covered Bridge on Lamoille Valley Rail Trail

• Penobscot River Trail - Grindstone ME

A privately owned but free trail system with a very well maintained 16 mile loop trail. Half of the loop follows the Penobscot River and is quite pretty. Since it is not a former railway bed, there are more hills than we originally expected but they were not too strenuous. There are intermediate connector trails along the loop so it is possible to shorten the ride if the full loop is too long. Near the halfway point is the Long Meadow warming hut. It turns out that this place is also used for cross country skiing and snowshoeing during the winter months. The hut is positioned to give a great view of Mount Katahdin. The return portion of the loop goes through the woods but is still a nice wide gravel trail. You can even show up without a bicycle and borrow one of their loaner bikes and helmets. It even sounds like they have cross country skis to borrow. The commitment required to develop and maintain such a wonderful property is what really appealed to us.

 

Blog post with Penobscot River Trail Bike Ride.

Warming Hut with Mt Katahdin in Distance

• Sentinel Mountain Trail - Baxter State Park Medway ME

Baxter State Park is the beginning (or end) of the Appalachian Trail so it is a very popular location for hikers. In fact there are some rather unusual rules and regulations within the park to limit the number of visitors permitted in various areas. We were not up for the extreme distance and elevation required to hike the last leg of the AT but we did find a beautiful hike to the southwest of Katahdin that seemed to be more within our capabilities. Sentinel Mountain at Kidney Pond Campground is rated as a moderate 5.4 mile out and back hike with a little over 1100 feet of elevation gain. The initial part of the hike is relatively flat along the edge of Kidney Pond.  Most of the climbing is required in a half mile section with an average slope of 24%. But once to the top of the mountain, there are some spectacular views of nearby mountains. 

 

Blog post with Sentinel Mountain Hike.

Nice View from Sentinel Mountain

• Table Rock Trail - Pickens SC

Located in northern South Carolina, Table Rock State Park is less than 15 miles from Brevard NC which happens to be one of our favorite places for hiking. It seems like we should have visited this part of the foothills of the Appalachians earlier. This trail is rated as hard with 6.8 miles and over 2300 feet of elevation gain! It was a steep and challenging climb to the ridge of the peak. There are several viewpoints along the easier terrain along this ridge with some incredible views of the surrounding mountains. Our timing was excellent by reaching the final viewpoint in time for lunch and to soak in the scenery. As we finished lunch, a cloud bank rolled in and shrouded the whole top of Table Rock in a surreal fog with almost no visibility beyond a few hundred feet. This is a tough but beautiful hike. 

 

Blog post with Table Rock Hike.

View from Table Rock

• Sittons Gulch Trail - Cloudland Canyon State Park Trenton GA

We had made a day trip to this state park back in the fall of 2021 and found one of our favorite hikes for our sixth year review, but this time we camped in the park so we could explore some of the many other trail options. Our favorite hike from the earlier visit was the West Rim Trail that follows the top of the canyon. We repeated that hike again but also did this trail which follows the creek along the floor of the canyon. At almost 5 miles out and back and just over 1000 feet of elevation, this hike is moderately challenging although the majority of the elevation is comprised of a metal staircase that leads down from the visitor center to the two beautiful falls before proceeding down the side of the creek. The water was flowing rapidly and it was nice to have the constant sound of rushing water for the full hike. Being at the bottom of the canyon makes it feel like a completely different environment even though we are within a mile of the other trail. 

 

Blog post with Sittons Gulch Hike

Nice Hike Along the Creek

Below is a map showing all 401 places we have camped at over the past nine years. Just below the map is a link which will open up an actual Google Map. Doing so will permit you to pan and zoom around the country. Clicking on any pin will pop up a window with a link to the blog post(s) for that location. If you are visiting an area we have stayed near, our previous posts may help you find interesting places to see - especially if you are into hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or simply to see some photos from outings we took while visiting. We do not do write much about the campgrounds we stay in so don’t use the blog posts with the hopes of finding campground reviews.

Click Here to Open Interactive Google Map of All Stops

We have some of year 10 planned out. After an excellent 2 weeks here in Marquette Michigan volunteering with the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate helping to build two different homes, we will be heading further west in the Upper Peninsula before dropping down into Wisconsin for the Oshkosh Air Show. Then we head into Minnesota for a month before starting our journey back to Florida for another winter season. No clue where next spring and summer will lead us.

Marquette Habitat Build

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We had a quiet night at the casino in Manistique. It is only 146 miles from there to our next stop in the Marquette area for a two week Habitat for Humanity RV-Care-a-Vanner build. Check-in isn’t until mid afternoon although we do need to stop for diesel along the way, we stick around through the morning before heading out. There is a lot of nothing between the northern shore of Lake Michigan and the southern shore of Lake Superior here in the Upper Peninsula. But at least it is a pretty drive and the fuel stop worked out fine. We pull into Country Village RV Park in Ishpeming (a little west of Marquette proper) a bit before 3 and they direct us to our site. It is just a mostly grass site but it does have full hookups which will seem like a luxury for the next two weeks. It’s been 53 nights in a row without sewer at our site and 8 nights without electric!

Welcome to Marquette

The campground wasn’t very full which was a bit surprising. The Marquette Habitat for Humanity affiliate doesn’t have their own camping facilities like the one in Vero Beach Florida does, but they do get a reduced rate at this campground for the people that come to help out on their builds. After getting setup, Laura and Rick walk over from a nearby site to introduce themselves as the team leaders for our build. There is to be a get together at the pavilion in the campground later this afternoon when we will meet the other RV-Care-a-Vanners for this build as well as some of the local affiliate team. It turns out there are 4 total rigs here - 3 couples and a single traveler. Andy is the local construction supervisor and we are given the location where we are to show up tomorrow morning to get working.

It’s been some time since we have needed to set our alarm to go to work, but we arrived at 9 Southwoods Lane - south of Ispeming - bright and early to receive our marching orders. The site had already been rough excavated for the house’s foundation. Batter boards were placed in the four corners and string line run between them to identify where the footings are to be placed. All of our team had filled out online forms prior to coming to Marquette asking us to rate our skills at various construction tasks. Now it make sense as to why we were asked how much experience we had at setting forms for a concrete footing.

Our Site Ready for Us

We meet Adam at the site. He is employed by the Marquette Habitat affiliate to be the site supervisor and will be the person directing our daily activities for the next 2 weeks. Our mission for the next few days is to dig down about 10 inches from the rough grade along the string lines, create forms from the 16 foot 2 by 4’s, and set them in place per the construction drawings. Even though the lot or house is not huge, the soil conditions were quite varied - from sandy to very rocky clay. With our team of 7 we made some pretty good progress by our morning break. One nice aspect of this build is that the local businesses or supporters will provide the team with lunch each day. Joan picks up the food from a different place each day and arrives at noon. Of course we need to get some local food in the UP - the pasty (rhymes with nasty). It is sort of like a handheld pot pie.

Our Progress By Morning Break

This home is not getting a full height basement but a 4 foot crawl space. Besides the footing around the perimeter of the house, there needs to be footing down the length of the building in the center for support of columns to come later. I lucked out and wasn’t doing too much of the digging but was assisting Adam in building the forms to the proper length. One problem in digging the footing is where to toss the soil. I suspect that each shovelful of dirt got moved at least twice. We also got told that the one end of the building needed to be dug down to a depth of 28 inches! Of course this happened to be in a section of the rocky clay soil that was very difficult to remove. But but by the end of our first day, we had made excellent progress.

End of Day 1

Tuesday morning was likely a bit more challenging to get up since the bodies were now a bit more sore and knew what was in store for the day. We needed to finish digging, checking for square and level and doing the final setting of the forms. The deeper footing section needed to be lined with 1 inch styrofoam insulation since this area will not be backfilled as much. Our goal was to have everything done by the end of the day in order for the concrete to be delivered the following morning. We might not be a well oiled machine yet, but we are working on it. We actually have a short day today because we have all been invited to a local supporter’s beach house on Lake Superior for dinner tonight and it is a bit of a drive from Ispeming. But we leave the site ready for concrete delivery tomorrow. While writing this blog post, I happened to check out Google Earth and street view of the building location and was flabbergasted to see that the Google car must have driven by during our lunch break today. I could clearly make out 3 of the people and think I was sitting on the pile of lumber. What a weird coincidence.

Google Street View Camera Caught Us at Lunch

End of Day 2

We had been told about the local benefactor that tries to host each team coming to Marquette during our orientation meeting on Sunday. It’s almost an hour drive east of camp but that the last mile is on a “two rut lane” and will likely take another 15 minutes. We decide to carpool to limit the number of vehicles that need to make the drive. We had been provided a map that looked more like an old treasure map than normal directions. Apparently putting in an address and using Google Maps doesn’t get people there. With that in mind, I had pulled up the map in my geocaching app in order to get coordinates since we often are going to very remote locations that normal maps don’t work well with. While checking this out, I happened to see if there were any geocaches in the area. I was surprised to see there was a geocache hidden pretty much at the exact spot we were told to go for dinner. The host’s last name is Quirk and this geocache was hidden by someone named quirktoo. Coincidence? I think not.

The drive up the two rut was okay simply by going slow. There are a few other homes or cabins along the way and I really hope we don’t run into somebody trying to get out. When we get to her A frame cabin, she suggests we get our cars turned around now so we are pointing in the right direction when we go to leave. As we walked into the house, I notice that my GPS is telling me the cache is just 75 feet away! We go in to meet our hostess and get a history of her (and her late husband) coming to own this little piece of paradise. They had actually started geocache back in 2005 which is when this particular geocache was hidden - nearly 20 years ago! We all head out to take in the views of Lake Superior from the very rocky shore. I found the geocache and the mosquitoes found us. They were ravenous and made enjoying the view a bit more challenging.

Rocky Shore of Lake Superior

Group Photo Before Dinner

We head back in for dinner and have a nice meal and talk about all sorts of things. One tradition she has with all her guests is to take a rock and sign it with a sharpie so she can later hang it on the wall (or ceiling?) of the A frame. She has had  many dozens of teams and hundreds of guests over the years. We cannot stay too late since it is a long drive back and we have a big day tomorrow with the concrete delivery.

Rocks from Some Previous Team Dinners

Wednesday morning we put the finishing touches on the forms and rebar and wait for the concrete to arrive. Fortunately the Marquette affiliate has also ordered a pumper truck so we won’t need to do a wheelbarrow brigade. I think Andy stated that he ordered 7 yards of concrete. At 4000 pounds per yard, that would have been a backbreaking job especially over the uneven ground. Since there was going to be an overhead danger, we all needed to where our hard hats. We had gotten ours back in 2019 at a Habitat build in Florida and have traveling around the country since then. The pumper truck showed up around 8:30 and got positioned. I have never seen one of these up close and personal so it was a treat. The concrete truck arrived 25 minutes later and we were ready to pour.

The Pump Truck Arrives

And the Concrete Truck

Since I knew this might be an interesting thing to record, I had brought my action camera and tripod and set it up on the slight hill on the back corner of the lot. Rather than shooting video, I shot still images every 3 seconds. From this I was able to create a time-lapse video of the pour. Adam guided the hose while the pump truck operator used a remote control gizmo to control the flow of concrete and boom position.

Cleaning Out the Pump Hose

And Starting to Pour

Mark Lifts Rebar Ahead of the Pour

Once the first corner was filled, the team jumped into action and stared to screed the concrete to the top of the forms. We were all busy doing our things and looking down the whole time that we didn’t necessarily realize just how quickly the pour went. It wasn’t until I created the video that I realized the speed of the process - way faster than wheelbarrows!

Link to YouTube Video

We had to wait for the concrete to setup a bit before we could set the vertical rebar which will tie into the crawl space walls. They are going to use large styrofoam blocks that interlock like Legos and are then filled with concrete. By lunchtime we had pretty much finished our job here and could head over to another build site that they have in progress. It’s only a couple miles away at 4 Birch Lane. I hadn’t taken my own photo when we arrived, but the Google car had been through this neighborhood around the same day, so I have a picture of what we found.

Screeding the Footings

Street View of Second Job Site

We have some aggressive goals for this site as well. They would like to have all the interior walls primed and painted so that window trim can be installed next week and kitchen cabinets hung as well. This house was also was built with the styrofoam blocks but not just for the foundation but the actual walls. Which means the walls of the house are 10 inches thick! The nice aspect of this home is the interior is quite cool, which feels wonderful after working out in the heat and humidity we have been experiencing outside at the other site with almost no shade. We have a local volunteer join us for the interior painting. We almost had too many people trying to paint in the same rooms and often it wasn’t clear which walls and ceilings had already been painted. Plus, the coolness of the interior didn’t help the paint dry very quickly. But we make do and at least get a start on the task.

The next morning we are back over to the first job site. The concrete has setup enough that we can begin to strip the forms and actually start to “play” with our oversized Legos. By the morning break we have made good progress and start getting a feel for how they go together. By the end of Thursday, we have things nearly complete with just a few finishes touches to complete tomorrow.

Progress By Morning Break

Legos in Place End of Thursday

Friday morning, we were told to come to wrap up the foam blocks. With the plan to then head back to the other site to work on painting interior walls. When lunch arrived, we were eating when the word came that our wall pour which had been planed for next Monday had been moved up to this afternoon. There was a big flat pour that was cancelled due to the threat of rain, so the concrete truck was directed to our job ahead of schedule. Unfortunately that meant that I had not brought along the camera and tripod to document this pour.

Pump Truck Getting Into Position

This pour was a bit more concrete than the footings and even more critical to have the pump truck which arrived around 1:30. When the concrete arrived, the pour was on. This was a bit more challenging since the wall is 4 feet tall. They did not have a vibrator to settle the concrete so our team was tasked with doing it manually. Some people were given a mallet and board to pound on the outside or inside of the wall. While others used sticks to come in from above and try to eliminate voids. They opted to do the pour in two lifts to try to help with the process of manually vibration. I guess since the styrofoam stays in place, we will never know how well the voids were eliminated.

Pump Operator in Foreground, Adam Guides Pour, Andy Supervises

Chris and Jack Hard at Work in Foreground

It was tiring work and my shoulders were aching after we called it a day later that afternoon. The good thing about getting to this stage on Friday, the walls will have the whole weekend to cure so we can come back here Monday morning to strip the bracing. At least we now have a weekend to relax and do some sightseeing.

Walls Braced by End of Friday

That evening we head into downtown Marquette to wander around and find dinner. We had heard good things about a restaurant called the Vierling and their whitefish dinner. We had never tried whitefish and wanted to see what it was like. We parked and headed there. It was fairly early but it was Friday. When we asked to have dinner, they asked if we had a reservation. Nope but they found a table as long as we could be done in 60 minutes. We told them we could as long as the wait from the kitchen was reasonable. We both got the whitefish dinner and it was good but we had gotten the Cajun version so the flavor of the fish was somewhat overpowered by the seasoning.

Beautiful City Hall Downtown Marquette

After dinner, we wandered around downtown working on an Adventure Lab and then walking along the waterfront and old docks from the iron ore days of the town. There is still an active iron ore dock north of town that has ships coming in and out. We even tried to work in a trip to see one of the huge freighters come in or out but we never seemed to find one arriving when we were available to check it out.

There are a lot of old relics from the former dock. The lower harbor ore dock was quite the sight. At 969 feet long and 86 feet tall and 68 feet wide - it’s big. The iron ore was brought into the structure and gravity fed the 150 bins inside the structure. Ships would be docked on either side and the 75 chutes per side would dump the ore into the hold of the ship. It was built in the early 1930’s and was in use until 1971.

Huge Lower Harbor Iron Ore Dock

Side View

Downtown Marquette is quite the vibrant town with lots of shops and restaurants. There is one corridor of several block known as the Downtown Social District. You’re able to get a drink at one establishment to go and wander around between other places. We enjoyed visiting the town on a pleasant Friday evening.

Old Pylons from Former Dock

Pleasure Boats

Stone Carving

Calm on Lake Superior

The next day, we decide to try one of the rail trails in the area. The Iron Ore Heritage Trail is a 47 mile long trail that starts well west of Ishpeming and runs east through Marquette and beyond. We only plan on riding a portion of it and we figured out we could simply bike from our campsite on a few city streets before we reach the trail. We start out with a stop to the Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum. Since the plan is for a bike ride, we only check out the outdoor displays instead of paying for a tour of the actual museum.

Old Shaft Towers

That's A BIG Bucket!

More Displays at Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum Grounds

Very Colorful Iron Ore Rock

Some of the trail through town is along roads but once east of downtown, the trail is much more secluded and quite nice. We have a few geocaches to find along the way. One cache is placed near the RAMBA trailhead (Range Area Mountain Bike Association). They have a series of single track trails off this paved rail trail and even have some sections with steep banked curves and skinny sections that put your bike handling skills to the test. We look around but stick with our original plan.

RAMBA This Way

Banked Curve

Unusual Clock

All along the trail are mile markers. Not too unusual for this type of trail, but these are not just simple posts in the ground with the mile printed on it. No, these are sections of old rail with quite a bit of detail put into the artwork welded on to each one.

Artistic Mile Markers

We make it into the town of Negaunee and stop at Jackson Mine Park to eat the lunch we had brought along. It’s a cute little park with restrooms and a covered picnic area.

Iron Ore Heritage Trail Enters Negaunee

Jackson Mine Park

After lunch, we continue east and pass an old railroad depot. It wasn’t clear what it has been turned into - possibly some sort of rental venue for parties.  But whatever it is now, they have kept it looking good.

Union Station Depot in Negaunee

Further east of town is the Negaunee Mine Memorial right next to the remnants of the old mine building. It honors the 51 men killed in a cave-in at the mine back in 1902. About 8 miles into the ride, we spotted a new looking boardwalk section that veered off through a marsh area. We didn’t spot any wildlife like wading birds but it was still  pretty detour. We didn’t go much further since we knew the trail started to head downhill as it works its way into Marquette. Not that coasting there wouldn’t have been enjoyable, but we knew we would need to pedal back up for the return trip.

Mine Accident Memorial

New Boardwalk Along Trail

Chris had picked out an ice cream shop in Negaunee, so we turned around and headed back along the trail until we got to downtown and then wandered through the street checking out the beautiful old buildings. Obviously the mining industry had brought a lot of wealth to this town back in the day.

St Paul Church

School Admin Building

After some good ice cream, we work our way back onto the rail trail and head back into Ishpeming. There are several displays highlighting the iron industry along the way and we take the time to check a few of them on our way back.

Hammering Drill Bit

Old Mine Ore Cars

We still had some energy left and one other place to see further west of Ishpeming and our campground. We drive by this place each day going to and from the job site and it looked rather unique. Da Yoopers Tourist Trap has a large property with an eclectic mix of “items” on display. There are hundreds of things to check out so we park the bikes and walk around. Some of the things make us chuckle but more frequently we question what would prompt somebody to take the time, materials and energy to make this oddball item? It was a busy place with dozens of other people walking around like we were. It seems like the under 12 age group found the displays more enjoyable than we did.

A Real Big Wheel!

Deer Games

World's Largest Chainsaw

It was a bit more of a challenge to bike back from Da Yoopers to our campsite given how much traffic there is on US-41. But we safely made it back and got in 18 miles that worked out well to exercise other muscles than we were using at the construction.

Sunday was to be the hottest day so far during our stay in Marquette. Some of the other workers from our team were trying to get in a kayak ride over by Picture Rocks over by Munising. Since we have already visited that area back in 2016 and I’m not much into water sports, we had declined the invitation to join them. As it turned out the wind out on Lake Superior had not permitted them to actually get in and kayak. We decided to head to the air conditioned comfort of a local museum. The Michigan Iron Industry Museum is just a short drive east of Negaunee.

Michigan Iron Industry Museum

This is a fairly large museum with a couple of floors and extensive displays regarding iron - not just how it is mined but what it is used for. So some of the displays like the Model A or a bank vault door shows how the abundance of iron ore in the region helped to fuel all sorts of other industries.

Another Ford Model A

Iron Sculpture

Bank Vault Door

We found the displays and exhibits regarding the actual mining operations to be much more interesting. I did discover that the one display of an iron ore rail car full of rocks and dirt was quite real. I touched the fine dust to determine if it was fake and realized that the dust had a consistency that spread over my fingers and could not be easily brushed off. I was forced to go find a bathroom to thoroughly wash my hands before spreading it all over myself. I cannot imagine just how dirty of a job it must have been to work in the mines.

Real Messy Iron Ore

A Functioning Iron Ore Dock Loads Ship

Old Pneumatic Drill

Another fact I hadn’t considered previously is that when surveyors tried to determine the various property lines of the claims, the normal compass was influenced by the magnetic nature of all the iron ore at the surface and a different method was required. The solar compass was invented in 1836 to overcome that issue. We took our time wandering the museum and staying out of the heat.

Solar Compass

Huge Slide Rule

There was one video with lots of footage of iron ore mining from past to present that was pretty informative. We ended up in the darkness of the fake mine shaft. It included quite a few sound effects of drilling the holes and blasting the wall with dynamite. It was well worth the visit for a couple hours.

Metallurgical Research Equipment

Visiting a Mine Shaft

Monday morning we reported back to the foundation walls. We needed to remove all the bracing and supports and the rest of the forms so that it would be ready for the next stage - likely the plumbers. I didn’t expect it to be that big of a job but many of the 2 by 4’s making up the forms had been completely surrounded by concrete during the pour and screeding so we needed to chip away at it just to pull the forms out. But with the team working all morning the job here was done well ahead of schedule and we could go back to the other home to work on painting interior walls.

Finished Foundation Walls at Lunch on Monday

We arrive to find this place quite busy. A crew of about 10 people from Iowa, who volunteer here frequently as part of their church group, were starting to install the siding on the outside of the house. Since they have all worked together for years, they were definitely quite efficient in their task.

Tuesday our group split up and a few of us went over to some homes completed last fall that are now occupied. There were a few outdoor tasks that hadn’t been finished before the snow arrived. Four of us raked up the straw from the sections of lawn that hadn’t taken and then reseeded the area only to spread new straw on top of it all. It didn’t look much different when we left versus when we arrived but hopefully this time the grass will actually grow.

We finished up the week working on the more complete home. We got all the rooms painted and started to work on trimming out the windows. I’ve done this job before on the house we built 25 years ago back in New York but this was quite different simply because of the 10 inch wall depth. One of the other RV-Care-a-Vanners worked with me to work on the 9 windows. After the first couple, we got into the groove with our only real problem was sharing the time on the table saw and chop saw with the outdoor siding crew.

Trimmed Kitchen Window

Trimmed Bedroom Window

By the end of the week, we had switched to actually trimming out the interior windows. Adam had come up with the design he wanted us to use and we had just enough time to finish the task before our two weeks concluded on Friday afternoon. By then, the team from Iowa had finished up the bulk of the exterior siding and were starting to set the kitchen cabinets.

Outside of 4 Birch Lane

Kitchen Cabinets Being Installed

We said our goodbyes with the local team and those from Iowa and the seven of us headed over to the first house to get a ceremonial photo in front of our handiwork. Later that evening, we all met at a local restaurant in Ishpeming to have dinner. Half the crew was leaving Saturday morning and the rest would head out on Sunday.

Back to First Site for Photos

Accomplished Care-a-Vanner Team

Since we weren’t leaving until Sunday, we had all day Saturday to explore. We needed to find a geocache in the county immediately to the west of camp. Our next RV stop was to the west, but much further so we figured that it would be easier to get there from Ishpeming. We first head to the little town of Alberta Michigan. There is a virtual geocache from 2002 which sounded interesting. When we pulled off the main highway into town, we saw signs for event parking. We hadn’t planned on there being an event, but since we were here we would check it out.

Our virtual cache took us to an old sawmill that is currently being restored so not much to see. However a nearby building - an old pump house - was open and a docent was inside to show us around and tell us about Alberta. It turns out that this place has a rather unusual history. It was founded by Henry Ford in 1936 as a sawmill town and was his attempt to create the ideal community. It never really caught on but dozens or so homes and other buildings are still in use and owned by Michigan Tech.

Old Sawmill in Alberta

a

Getting Tour of Pump House

We head past a few of the homes towards where the event was being held. There were various vendors selling different foods and crafts. One of the larger halls was where the university was showing off its courses and fields of study for those looking to advance their education. One field in the corner of the town was where the car show was taking place. Given the venue, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that there were quite a few Ford automobiles. We picked up some desert to go with the lunch we had brought along.

Alberta Michigan

Old Ford Model T and A

1955 Ford Wagon

Just over a mile south of Alberta is a small roadside park. Besides being a rest stop for travelers, it is also the trailhead for Canyon Falls. It was actually quite a busy spot with many people stopping to walk down the trail to the first set of falls a quarter mile or so from parking.

Heading to Canyon Falls

First Set of Falls

We had a geocache to find a bit further along the trail and we discovered that many fewer people walked down this far so we didn’t have too much trouble finding the container without being noticed. We decide that it was a pleasant trail along the creek so we just continued down the path. There were some decent views of the various falls along the way.

Larger Second Set of Falls

By the time we made it 1.5 miles out, we were pretty much the only people on the trail but we decided to turn around and head back. It’s a nice hike that can be short or a bit longer as desired.

Delicate Looking Mushrooms

Unusual Mushroom Texture

As we headed back to Ishpeming, we made one last stop at another roadside park. This time at Tioga Creek. We were partially just checking it out to determine if we could use it tomorrow as a rest stop with the motorhome while pulling the Jeep since we will be traveling part of this route. There was also a geocache hidden back the path towards some falls. It turned out that the trail to the falls was fairly overgrown and when we got a glimpse of them from a distance, we decided that this was far enough. On the way back we found the cache and stopped by a footbridge over the creek on the west side of the park to take in a better view.

Tioga Creek Falls

View from Footbridge

Well we survived our two week work assignment here at the Marquette Habitat for Humanity build. We had actually enjoyed it enough that we discussed the possibility of us working this place into our return trip after we finish up the summer in Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota. We were told they always welcome volunteers. It would at least be interesting to see how the two homes have evolved in the summer months between visits. Next stop - the Porcupine Mountains of far western UP.