What? It’s just some pictures!

..in every full-time RVer’s life when they ask themselves, “What would we do if (fill in the blank)?” The blank could be

and so on. Despite only really hitting the road in 2021, we realized in 2022 that it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about how we should address the “what ifs” and began to look for some land. We love our home state of Wisconsin but the area we were most interested in (Up Nort’) was showing crazy prices and not many parcels as large as we’d like.

So we went Up Nort-er and started looking in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Linn had spent some time in her late teens and later, and where we’d RVed a couple summers. Prices were much more reasonable and vast tracts of land were still available. By late 2022, we’d purchased 54 acres (not vast, but respectable) of Commercial Forestry Program land in Marquette County.

While in the UP in 2023, we chose a builder and began initial planning. We chose a modular home that could be constructed in the factory over the winter so that weather would be less of a mitigating factor.

We returned in spring 2024 thinking construction would be moving along apace because we were idiots not as well-informed as we could have been. We are, as of late June 2025, again in the UP where construction…is moving along apace!

The foundation footings have been placed, the groundwater has been found to be far higher than it appeared in fall (no huge surprise there) so modifications made to the foundation plan and installation of those mods have begun. Allegedly, we may expect the foundation to be poured in July and the house to be placed later in the summer. We might even have occupancy mid-October but we know better than to pin all our hopes and dreams on “mights and maybes.”

Kinda.

Nevertheless, we will be up here this winter, since a lot of new home-related warranties are one-year and we want to be here to make sure everything works as it should and if not, is immediately addressed before it becomes a disaster.

While a lot of planning is finally playing out, more planning hovers over us. Where do we store the RV over the winter? What are the logistics of getting our stuff out of storage and up to the house with two dogs that can’t be left alone for more than a few hours? How much firewood could a Matthew chuck if a Matthew could chuck wood?

We do plan to keep RVing – we’ve barely touched the US east of the Mississippi, fer cry-yi! The current plan is to head east from the UP in spring 2026 to FINALLY get to Maine, where Matt intends to eat so much seafood he develops a shellfish allergy.

I’ll have a salad, thanks.

Real photos to follow in the coming days

Probably.