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.
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