Memorial Weekend

The family and I went up north for a long Memorial weekend.  We got there around midnight on Thursday and left about noon on Memorial Day.  The weather was perfect. It was sunny and 70s all weekend.  We had one thunderstorm Sunday night, other then that, a fantastic weekend.

We hauled the boy's motorcycles up and spent all day Friday riding the trails.  They had a blast.  This is a first for our family and I think we may make a habit of trail riding, enjoying northern Michigan.  We discovered lakes, sand trails, flowers, mushrooms, pine trees, deep mud puddles that will stop a small motorcycle in it's tracks, logged acres, bridges over streams, jeep trails that go forever, and ticks.  We got lost a few times and had to pull out the compass to reorient ourselves. 

On Saturday my father-in-law showed up to help me drill a shallow well.  He is a retired well-man so, that was greatly appreciated. We drove down about 13 feet and the threads broke so, that was the end of that or so I thought.  My father-in-law left after lunch because there wasn't much more we could do at this point.   We needed to rethreard the pipe before we can go any further.   After he left I went into town and rented a pipe cutter and threader and rethreaded it myself.  By then it started getting dark so we waited until Sunday to start driving again.  We drove down another two or three feet and now it won't drive another inch.  Not sure what's going on but I decided to stop for the weekend and think this through a bit more.  So we spent the rest of Sunday riding.  Not a bad alternative to hand drilling a well.

My son, Mikey, and me hand driving a well.  This was very hard work.  I knew it would be ruff but I had no idea how hard this would drive.  It took us 22 hits with the driver to drive about an inch down.  The reason it's driving hard is because there is a lot of clay.  We here hoping to only have a few feet of it but it doesn't seem to letting up.  Every part of my core body hurt.

This is Tomahawk Creek Flooding Area that we discovered by accident while out riding the trails.  Left to right is, Joey 12, Mikey 17, me and Curtis 14.

 

The camp site.

Close up of fire pit.  We just added the large stumps for extra seats.  Also, we cut up downed trees and stacked some some wood for future use.  We finished every day sitting around this fire pit.  I love the memories we are making here.

 

We are the 3rd owners of this property.  The 1st owner was a single woman from New York who received this property from the state of Michigan as a homestead.  We found one of her dump sites and dug up some very old, cool bottles.  A few were old prescription liquor bottles from the Prohibition.

This is my wife, Jenny, her dad and my middle son, Curt pretending to be drinking.