Catching Up

It seems that I have been negligent lately in keeping up with our blog. Reason being, that in May 2005 after selling our home in Appleton, Wisconsin we purchased a large 5th wheel RV, a heavy duty PU truck and began our adventure of traveling and living full-time in an RV. This blog was created shortly afterward on 1/1/2006 so that our family and friends might follow us in our travels.
Mainly because of health concerns, this spring after six years on the road we decided to discontinue full-time RVing and moved into the Schlueter family farmhouse on a cherry farm in Leelanau County Michigan. We have a life lease on the house which has been vacant since the passing of Teddy's parents.
Teddy's brother, John owns and operates the farm and lives in his own house across the road from us.
And, since we are not RVing any more, I no longer feel compelled to update the blog very often.
Life on the farm or any permeant home for that matter, although not boring, is much more static than while traveling as day to day events often repeat themselves. I will, however, make an entry every so often for the benefit of the many RV friends that we have made while traveling.

Lets see  now...where was I...oh yeah...life on the farm... or "The Farm" as we have named our newly remodeled farmhouse.
I won't go into the updating and remodeling which actually began two years ago as it has been well documented in previous blogs.
We now have obtained Michigan drivers licenses and have registered to vote so as of January 1, 2012 we are now legal Michigan residents. We still remain loyal Packer fans even though we seem to be outnumbered by Lion loyalists. Some things just have to be regarded as sacrosanct.  ;-)
This winter I have been catching up on my reading, we both read on Kindles; I logged over 60 books read last year on two different web sites for readers Shelfari and Goodreads If you are a reader I highly recommend joining a readers club. It is an excellent resource for exchanging reviews and other info with like minded readers. Teddy has also been kept busy working as a volunteer at two local different thrift stores, one in Traverse City on Mondays and one in Lake Leelanau on Thursdays.
Up to now were fortunate to have an unusually mild winter but winter has now struck in its full fury with blizzard conditions for the past two days.

Here is how "The Farm" looked when we arrived

last  May...

...and this is how it looked last week, before our current blizzard.

As for the snow, the nice thing about being retired is the fact that we don't have anywhere that we have to go to; we don't even have to walk out to the mailbox to pick-up our social security check as we have direct deposit. So let it snow, and if need be I can do most of our shopping on the internet and let UPS & FedEx do the driving. Hell, you can even buy groceries on Amazon.com.

Life in the 21st century is good!

Visitors from Wisconsin

July 27 thru 30 we were again honored with a visit from our very good friends from Appleton, Dick and Jen Orr. They timed their visit to coinside with the annual Traverse City Film Festival which was running all that week. We had great plans to take in some of the film at the festival but we got caught up with other activities and never got to any of the films. Oh well...there's always next year. (smile)
They arrived Wednesday evening; we had a nice dinner and then we spentThursday visiting the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Dick wanted to have a go at climbing the dunes.  He was ill and missed going to the dunes last year and didn't want to let the opportunity go by again. It turned out to be a beautiful day; not too hot, just right for a dune climb.

I waited in the car while Teddy , Jen & Dick attacked the dune.

Here they are just starting out...

...and here they are just cresting the first stage about 20 mins. later.

After that they disapeared from my sight as you can't see the second rise from the ground.



Meanwhile I amused myself by watching people play on the dunes and engaging total strangers in conversation, as I am wont to do. (grin)

About 40 minutes later the reappeared none the worse for the wear. Next we drove the "Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive" a 7 1/2 mile loop that meanders through forest and dunes with several overlooks of Lake Michigan along the way from the top of the dunes which rise some 400 feet above the lake in this area. If you should ever visit the area this is a not to be forgotten look at the magnificence of Northwestern Michigan. Growing up here I was not aware of how beautiful it is where we live, I suppose I was thinking that the whole world was like this. It wasn't until I left that I appreciated the land of my birth.

We arrived back at "The Farm" late in the afternoon tired and happy and toasted our friendship with double Martinis all around before dinner.

Then on Friday we went on a drive through Leelanau County, stopping at historic "Fishtown" in Leeland, had a smelt lunch at "Dick's Pour House" in the village of Lake Leelanau, drove to the tourist town of Suttons Bay and finished up the day with ice cream at Moomers, named the best ice cream in America by ABC's "Good Morning America" a few years back.

Sadly, Dick & Jen had to return to Wisconsin Saturday morning so after a hearty breakfast of Belgian waffles made by yours truly, the waffle King, we bade them Bon voyage for their trip home.

Their visit was all too brief but we are looking forward to seeing them as well as all of our other Wisconsin friends when we visit Appleton later this fall.

Off The Road & On "The Farm", With Larry & Teddy

There comes a time in  every full-time RVer's life when he/she must give in to the revenges of age, claim a spot on this planet and hang his hat there.
The physical demands and the cost of travel have finally convinced us that we must now bite the bullet and stay here in Leelanau County, Michigan year around on the Schlueter family cherry farm. Teddy's brother, John owns the farm but has his own home and as the farmhouse was standing vacant since the passing of Teddy's parents, John has given us a life lease on it in lieu of Teddy's share of the farm. We have named the house "The Farm" and I am changing the title of our blog to "On The Farm With Larry & Teddy" to be more indicative of our current life style. In the past three summers we have had some badly needed major upgrades done and are now finally finished with the remodeling. I really enjoy being here and am thinking that I might even enjoy looking out at the snow covered fields this winter, knowing that I don't actually have to go outdoors to shovel snow as John will plow us out and I don't have a job to go to anyway. So Teddy and I will just stay indoors, drink hot chocolate, read books and watch the birds on the feeders.
We have made many lifelong friends during our six years if RVing and treasure their friendship. We are hopeful that some them as well as our Wisconsin friends might, visit us here on "The Farm" winter and/or summer. There are many things to see and do here in the Grand Traverse region of Michigan and it is truly one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Movin' On

Our time is up here at Nevada Treasure in Pahrump, NV. Tomorrow morning we will pull-out for our annual trip East to our summer home in Leelanau County, Michigan where we will stay until October.

Here is an itinerary of our planned overnight stops along the way from here to Appleton, WI where we will spend a few days visiting our son & daughter in-law and old friends from when we lived there.

Here is a map showing those same overnight stops.




Barring any unforseen snags we then will travel on to Michigan arriving there on or about May 1.
Over the winter we had some additional work done on the farmhouse by our contractor, Gerard Belanger and can't wait to see the result.

Catching up

Teddy and I have been so busy for the past month that I have not been able to post. To bring things up to date we left Pahrump on April 26 for our annual trip back to Michigan to spent the summer months on "The Farm". We left a few days earlier than we ordinarily would have as we had to lay over in Sioux Falls for a couple of days to renew our drivers licenses. We obtained our DLs in 2005 when we started fulltiming and in South Dakota drivers licenses are good for five years and expire on your birthday. Fortunately for us both of our birthdays are in July so in our case, the family that expires together renews together. ;-)  Also in SD one has to stay overnight in a motel or campground and show a receipt in order to obtain a DL as they will not accept a mail-forwarding address on the application although they do put our mail-forwarding address on the actual license.  A lot of bureaucratic red tape nonsense but nevertheless rules be rules.
While we were in Sioux Falls we drove the truck up to Erwin, SD to visit Randy & Sandy Bratland, friends from Lake Havasu, AZ. They showed us around their farm and treated us to a wonderful dinner.
From Sioux Falls we continued on to our old hometown of Appleton, WI. In Appleton we dropped the RV at Appleton Camping for some needed repairs and settled into a motel for a week's stay.
Because "The Farm" in Michigan is approximately twenty miles from the nearest shopping center in Traverse City, we decided to purchase a small economy car to use during the summer months instead of driving the one ton dually Silverado.

I had previously spoken to Bill Kolosso at Kolosso Toyota in Appleton and purchased a 2009 Toyota Yaris over the phone on his recommendation, so our first order of business was to stop by Kolosso's to finalize the purchase and pick-up the car.

While in Appleton we visited our son Mike and his wife, Toni. We had dinner one evening with Ed & Karen Thomas, former neighbors who are now also RVing seven months of the year in a motor home. Another delightful evening was spent at the home of our good friends Dick & Jenny Orr. Another of our Appleton friends Tom & Carol Sykes also are fulltiming in an RV and Jenny Orr put together a dinner party including them and us as well as Wes Evans, Kate Ewing and Greg & Sue Madson. All members of our famous Monday martini club. It was fun catching up on each other's goings-on.

We each had doctors appointments for our annual physicals at our family Doctor in Appleton on May 5th, that done we continued on toward our summer home in Leelanau County, Michigan, but not before stopping overnight in Escanaba to see Dan & Pat Martenson. Pat as usual treated us to a great dinner and we stayed up late playing dominoes. The following day, Friday May 7,  with me driving the truck & RV and Teddy following in the Yaris we finally arrived here at our summer home in Cedar, MI. The Yaris performed superbly averaging 46.8 MPG for the trip from Appleton to Cedar; we are very happy with that result.

Now the next task that awaits us is to continue with the upgrading and remodeling of our summer home aka "The Farm"
Note: See our posts from last summer for details of our previous remodeling efforts.




Addendum Sunday 5/23

Oh...I almost forgot. While in Appleton I finally got to meet Marcy, a "Flickr" friend. Flickr is a photographic site that allows photo hobbyists to upload pictures to display for family & friends and to exchange critiques of photographs. A few years ago we became "Flickr Friends" probably originally because of our common Appleton connection. Marcy is an interpreter for the Deaf in the Appleton public school system. On previous visits to Appleton our attempts at meeting in person always fell through because of scheduling difficulties, however this time we were able to meet for lunch at a little bistro near her school. I found her to be a delightful young lady and we got along famously swapping war stories and catching up on each other's bios. Teddy couldn't come along as she was having lunch with one of her Appleton girlfriends that day but if we can schedule another lunch on a future Appleton visit she wants to meet Marcy too.

Traverse City snow scene

My brother and sister-in-law, Lyle & Kathy Page recently emailed me this photo of their home in Traverse City, Michigan taken after an overnight snowstorm. While it is a beautiful Christmas card type scene, it doesn't seem nearly as beautiful after two hours of shoveling just to get your car out of the garage. Just thinking about it makes me happy that we are now spending our winters in Arizona.
Merry Christmas Lyle & Kathy, bet you can't wait to head for Myrtle Beach, SC, where you usually spend the winters.
You should come to Arizona this winter, there's an empty RV spot right next to us. ;-)

A long weekend in Wisconsin

Last weekend we hooked up the "Roadhouse" and visited our friends and family in Appleton. We left Michigan on Thursday, Aug. 23 and returned here to Cedar on the following Wednesday the 29th. Of course since it hadn't rained hardly a smidgen all summer, "Mother Nature" chose to pick our week in Wisconsin to make up for lost rainfall. But, we didn't let a little rain dampen our spirits. We had Lunch with Tony, Becky, & Rose on Friday and spent some time visiting with our friends, the Schemms, Heims, & Eskews from our old neighborhood on Saturday. Here are Teddy, Margi, Joanne & Barb hashing over old times on Heim's deck.
On Monday evening Dick & Jenny Orr hosted a welcome back "Martini Club" cookout for us and we were able to visit with Dick, Jen, Greg, Sue, Tom, Carol, Kate & Wes. I will have to admit that I broke my diet slightly that evening but have since recovered nicely. I also enjoyed my first Martini since my surgery. Cumiden be dammed!! We also were able to spend some time with Mike & Toni between their busy work schedules.
We had a great time and unlike the rainy trip over, the trip back was under fair and sunny skys. Here's a shot of Lake Michigan at a rest stop near the northernmost point of the lake.