MICHIGAN people.....please send info!

[Whitehouse Quail]

Vernors sounded so good I popped one open.

Ahh, that's it.

 

[michickenwrangler]

Quote:

Nothing's wrong with any of that stuff. We ALWAYS keep a bottle of Vernor's in the medicine cabinet. No, seriously, it's my favorite kind of pop. I love Bob Seger, Ted Nugent (even though Ted Nugent almost hit me with his zebra-Bronco one day when I was 15) and Blue Moon ice cream. Da Yoopers actually played a benefit concert at a high school I used to work at. I'm a Michiganiac at heart, I'll never leave this state! It just takes people awhile to get used to Vernors, it's got SOO MUCH more flavor than those silly dry Ginger-Ales.

Though it's not filmed in Michigan, I suppose the original poster will have to check out The Red Green Show at least once.

At my brother's wedding during our wonderfully frigid summer last year, they got married on a 40 degree day in July at Bay Harbor Inn on Lake Michigan. The other bridesmaids who were all from FL, CA and MD, all grumbled during the ceremony "This state stinks. WHY do you live here?"

To which I replied, "Oh, yah, anyt'ing above t'irty degress is shorts wedder, eh? Welcome to da great white nort'!"

The bridesmaids later asked my brother, "Why does your sister sound like the sheriff from Fargo?"

Maybe we should start a thread where everyone speaks like a Yooper ... unless that offends the trolls!

 

[HarlansHollowFarms]

Thanks for all the great info, Michigan sounds like a wonderful place to live.

Just to clairify, my DH is concidering transfering with the company he currently works for, so if the economy fails to recover in that area, he can always transfer again. He is with a shortline railroad who's parent company owns many others across the nation. Personally, we are hoping we can retire the next place we land!

The weather up there sounds fantastic to me.....4 seasons, not to cold (remember, I live in Montana), and not to warm, not to much rain, and they have trees!

Now, the only thing we are missing is PICTURES....ordinary backyards are just fine......we would like to see the countryside.

 

[The Chicken Lady]

Okay, here come some pics:

This is our front yard:

This is our back yard:

Usually, in rural areas, there are little plots of woods interspersed with the fields like what you can see in my back yard photo. You can't really go anywhere in Michigan without seeing trees.

This place is called Torch Lake. It's a couple of hours north of here. It has blue water just like the Caribbean:

Our house in the winter:

This is down the road from our house:

Oh, one more great thing about Michigan. It is legal to drive 70 mph on the highways.

 

[The Chicken Lady]

A few more...

This is the Grass River near Torch Lake:

Here's a photo from Chickenstock:

The trees in PJ Hoffmaster State Park, which is about 45 min. from Grand Rapids and one of my favorite summer haunts:

Here is a view of Lake Michigan through the forest at the edge of the beach (remember, that's all fresh water):

 

[The Chicken Lady]

Quote:
Nope, I think that must be a Polish thing because I've never heard that anywhere else.

West side gets more rain/snow so they do a lot more fruit and vegetable farming. East side, mainly root crops (sugar beets and potatoes) and dry beans. So you guys get the beauty of apple and cherry blossoms ... we get sugar beets and navy beans

Yup, if you end up living on the west side of the state, you learn about something really exciting called "lake effect snow."

If you have a long driveway, you either need a snowblower or some kind of snowplow to handle the big snows, unless you really like to shovel. But, we also get really awesome thunderstorms in the summer. If you're used to blizzards in your own state, lake effect snow won't surprise you very much.

There are great u-pick orchards and farmer's markets all over the state, so if you like fresh food (the sweet corn in late summer is absolutely fabulous!), you can find it easily. I love picking strawberries and blueberries to take home. YUM.

Michigan also has an excellent wine industry, often overlooked as well as cheesemaking, we're not far behind Wisconsin in dairy production. Also, we have 11,000 inland lakes. No spot is more than 6 miles from a water source. Just an hour north is the Manistee Nat'l Forest and you get into the Michigan highlands, lots of rivers, lakes, hills, even skiing isn't too far from there.

Excellent points. That is one of the main reasons I love Michigan -- because of the landscape. Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Bay City are pretty much the biggest cities before you head north. Generally, the more north you go in Michigan, the smaller the towns get (except on the lakeshore). I like this, but I like the wild outdoors. I am a big fan of camping and canoeing and lounging on the sand at the beach.

 

[Dar]

Each state, county, city you live in you have a choice. 1) To make the best of it and enjoy every minute of it. OR 2) nit pick everything to death, grumble about everything and worry about everything to the point of an ulser.

Any where you live is going to have "some" issues, some issues are just bigger then others. Some things are just way to far outside your comfort zone and thats ok.

Can I make a suggestion though?.. (I am gonna anyway..lol)

Either rent a hotel for a weekend and go there and actually see things for yourself, OR rent a house for a few months before getting into the purchase of a home. Why you ask? I will tell you what happened to me...

We moved from Oshawa Ontario to Aurora Ontario Just an hour and a half away simple move right?... NOT it was the move from HE (double hockey sticks)
first we trusted our real estate agent.... WRONG!!!! we went to look at the homes during daytime when everyone was asleep because no one woke before 3pm geeze we did not know this was a late community.. It seems that one half of the townhouses were owned by the government for low income houses and the other half was owned by hard working people. there was a section that was just disabled people from mental illness to physical disabilities.

at night this place came alive.. we had a drug dealer openly dealing drugs on the corner with the hooker on the other corner. we had children's services i the complex daily making sure truant students were actually at school. It was horrible. We went back to the agent and said WTH but we were sunk and stuck there We lasted 2 years and then found a small rental home on the other side of town and promptly moved.

When we sold the townhouse we kept the money in the bank for another house but never found one in time in Aurora before DH was transferred again this time to Guelph. We decided to learn from experience and rent for a bit till we could sniff out the town for ourselves and I am glad we did because there are a lot of areas of towa that are way outside my my comfort zone, finally we found this little parcel of land with an old house and bought and finally settled again. I will never move to a new town without renting there for a bit to see what its really like.

 

[michickenwrangler]

Here is Lake Superior from Munising

Here is the Mighty Mack, the Mackinac Bridge (please pronounce it Mackinaw)

Here's the AuSable River, in the Huron Nat'l Forest, birthplace of the Paul Bunyan legends

Here's my old horse Sera and I in the AuSable

Here is my backyard in the snow. This is lake effect nor'easter. I live about 20 miles from Lake Huron so our nor'easters are particularly bad although in general we don't get as much snow as the west side.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
You don't know what you're missing.

 

[HarlansHollowFarms]

Quote:
You don't know what you're missing.

Probably not, but I have been there and it just isn't where I would like to retire!