That’s what Friends are for….

You will notice that the map of North America on the right column of our blog (on the web version) has a new state colored in! Well, the state is not new, Michigan has actually been around since January 26, 1837, but the fact that it is colored on our map is new. We use Gas, Food, No Lodging as our States Visited map generator. For those of you viewing on a mobile device, here is an image of the map.

The color coding means:

Red/Pink means we have passed through.

Amber means we have spent a night or two there

Blue means we have spent more than a week

Green means we have spent quite a bit of time there or been back multiple times. 

Michigan went straight from blank to blue!

After leaving Pasha we headed SE towards Nipigon, then east on highway 17 which followed the northern shoreline of Lake Superior. This is all new territory for us. We landed for the night just outside of Wawa, Ontario at a boondocking spot called Scenic High Falls that we found on freecampsites.net.

It was a quiet and beautiful spot with only one other camper there. We took the dogs for a short hike before turning in for the night. 

 When we woke up the next morning the once rushing waterfall was down to a trickle, then 5 minutes later it was roaring again! They must have been controlling the water somewhere up river.

We carried on to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for our next stop. We had no trouble at the border at all and paid our $8.00 toll to cross the bridge. After spending the night at the Soo Locks Campground ($32 w/W&E) we headed south on State Highway 31. 31 is a very scenic highway that goes along the west shoreline of Lake Michigan with many quaint little tourist towns along the way.

Mackinac Bridge

Our destination for the day was our good friends Jim and Diana who are building a house outside of Sutton’s Bay. Actually, they are calling it a cabin but it looks an awful lot like a house to us! We had last seen them in ’19 when they stopped by our place on their way back from the west coast. During that stop they helped us with several projects around the house cuz that’s what friends are for when you are building a house…. To lend a helping hand. As I recall, they helped us put in several of the upper windows in our place. So when we heard they were building a house of their own team J-B went into action! After all, that is what friends are for…

When we arrived we knew we had a busy 3 days ahead of us as this is what we saw when we drove in. After getting our rig situated we put on our tool belts and got to work.  

All set up and ready to work!

Our first order of business was to frame the house. In a couple of hours we had it from looking like this….

To this….

At this point I know that some of you are getting suspicious asking yourself “Didn’t I see these same pictures in Jim and Diana’s blog a few weeks ago?” or “They could not possibly get that much work done in a couple of hours” or “Why aren’t Jim and Barb in any of those pictures?” To that I say; No, you just imagined that you saw those pictures on their blog and Barb and I were working so fast that if one tried taking pictures of us it would have been just a blur.

Once the framing was up, we went to work on the siding….

Then it was on to the inside…..sheetrocking, painting, electrical….. By the end of the first day we were exhausted!

For you that are still skeptical, here is a picture of me putting up one of their cabinets.

And of course one of me putting in their microwave because that’s what friends do….help put in microwaves when they need help.

We got so much done on the house we even took a down day to explore the area. Jim and Diana played the role of tour guides taking us through some of the highlights in the area. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is just minutes away from their house. Jim and Diana have volunteered at the park in the past so it was like having our own private tour!

Coast Guard Rescue Station

This area of Michigan is also known for the cherry and apple orchards as well as grape vineyards that dot the landscape. Miles and miles of fruit trees and wineries. We also stopped by the Fishtown Historic Dock in Leland to watch the salmon try to swim up the Leland River. There were a few fisherman there and we saw several salmon jumping.

Having made so much progress on the inside of the house we decided to tackle a few projects on the outside. One was to dig a trench from the house to the garage and lay some conduit in there for the security system.

Then it was on to the deck where Jim decided that he wanted a couple of extra support beams under one of his decks. This mean more digging, installing posts and the beams.

We had a few extra hours left at the end of the day and I thought to myself. What would a friend do now? Wax Diana’s car of course! Whew, it was exhausting work but I felt I should help out a little more instead of just moochdocking on their property, eating them out of house and home and drinking all their beer.

Even the dogs got in on a few photo ops!

I can't

quite reach the clutch!

You're out of toilet paper!

The three days went extremely quick and next thing we knew we were down to our last evening there where the 4 of us sat outside in the driveway around a campfire enjoying the evening.

We were so glad to be able to come out this way visit them and lend them a helping hand. After all, that’s what friends are for!