Another colorful sunrise greeted us after a restful night as we prepared for the last leg of the journey to Monica and Rob’s. It felt good to start the day with fully charged batteries, both us and the trailer.
Our route took us off of US2 for the first time since Oldtown. Shortly after crossing into Michigan, we used a series of state highways to find our way. Although I had it mostly mapped out, I must confess we relied a lot on Gretchen, our GPS, to find Chassell and the Aho’s home. The speed limits are 55, so travel was a little slower. The bonus was our fuel consumption was lower.
The trip across the top of Wisconsin took us inland except for around Ashland where we experienced magnificent views of the lake and lakeshore. It is a clean, attractive town as well. The majority of the rest of Wisconsin and into Michigan up to Chassell had us dissecting mixed deciduous and evergreen forests with fall colors starting to come on.
We advised Monica on Saturday that we would arrive at 3:00 p.m.; we arrived at 2:58, and we did not speed up or slow down to hit the time. Actually, we could have been an hour early as I did not realize most of the UP is in the Eastern Time zone. Only the counties that border Wisconsin are on Central. Anyway, the Aho’s have a lovely home on 5 acres. The house was originally built a hundred years ago. It was modernized and enlarged before they bought it and recently added to it further. The land is on a gravel road with little traffic. It is mostly flat with an old barn for Rob’s wood tools, a garage turned shop for the airplane he is building, a shelter for his old Allis tractor (I’m jealous), and a tree house for the kids.
We went for a walk in the neighborhood after dinner, with Monica carrying Regan in a back carrier and Rob pushing the twins in a stroller. There are lots of unutilized land parcels around here and nice parcels can be bought for a thousand an acre. Homes in the area sell for half of what they sell for in Spokane. The winters are long and snowy (average 300”), so maybe there are few willing to brave it. Also, there are few year round employment opportunities here. Copper mining and wood products are what caused this are to be settled. With mining gone and little logging going on, the main industries are tourism and Michigan Technical University.
Our route took us off of US2 for the first time since Oldtown. Shortly after crossing into Michigan, we used a series of state highways to find our way. Although I had it mostly mapped out, I must confess we relied a lot on Gretchen, our GPS, to find Chassell and the Aho’s home. The speed limits are 55, so travel was a little slower. The bonus was our fuel consumption was lower.
The trip across the top of Wisconsin took us inland except for around Ashland where we experienced magnificent views of the lake and lakeshore. It is a clean, attractive town as well. The majority of the rest of Wisconsin and into Michigan up to Chassell had us dissecting mixed deciduous and evergreen forests with fall colors starting to come on.
We advised Monica on Saturday that we would arrive at 3:00 p.m.; we arrived at 2:58, and we did not speed up or slow down to hit the time. Actually, we could have been an hour early as I did not realize most of the UP is in the Eastern Time zone. Only the counties that border Wisconsin are on Central. Anyway, the Aho’s have a lovely home on 5 acres. The house was originally built a hundred years ago. It was modernized and enlarged before they bought it and recently added to it further. The land is on a gravel road with little traffic. It is mostly flat with an old barn for Rob’s wood tools, a garage turned shop for the airplane he is building, a shelter for his old Allis tractor (I’m jealous), and a tree house for the kids.
We went for a walk in the neighborhood after dinner, with Monica carrying Regan in a back carrier and Rob pushing the twins in a stroller. There are lots of unutilized land parcels around here and nice parcels can be bought for a thousand an acre. Homes in the area sell for half of what they sell for in Spokane. The winters are long and snowy (average 300”), so maybe there are few willing to brave it. Also, there are few year round employment opportunities here. Copper mining and wood products are what caused this are to be settled. With mining gone and little logging going on, the main industries are tourism and Michigan Technical University.
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