Lake Huron Retreat Center, Burtchville, MI



Storm over Canada and Lake Huron - view taken
just down a short path from the cabin we worked on

One more day left here at the beautiful Lake Huron Retreat Center in Burtchville Township, MI. Okay, where is Burtchville and what is a “township”. We know where Burtchville is but haven't quite figured out what a “township” is. And we do know where it is. Look for Detroit then follow I-94 to the northeast to Port Huron then follow M-25 (Michigan's state highway system) up the lake for about 20 miles, and here you are – at the retreat center.

When I say this place is beautiful, I'm not kidding. It's located right on the lake and reminds me of looking out at the Gulf of Mexico from the beaches I grew up on in Pensacola (except the sand here is not as pretty as the Pensacola beaches). You look straight out and see nothing but water. But if you look closely to the right, you can barely see Canada. The beach here is gravely and a light brownish color. And the water is cold. Almost as cold as Fires Creek. Needless to say, I did not go swimmiing.



One of the many freighters we saw heading north

We have five Rvs at this NOMADS project and are parked in a nice area across the highway from the retreat center. Secluded off the road, we can hardly hear the traffic going by. Our main job was to rehabilitate an old cabin to make it into a two-bedroom, one-bath with kitchenette cabin. 

The retreat started out years and years ago as a Jewish girl's summer camp. In 1946, the camp ran into financial difficulty and was put on the market. A number of local Methodist churches pooled their resources and bought it. A few years later, the Methodist Conference took it over to make it into what it is today – mostly an adult retreat center. It has done very well hosting many different groups. While we've been here, one week hosted disadvantaged adults, another week a group of we-don't-know-what-they-were (but our main contact Dan called them grown up hippies), and this week is a “License to Preach” session for deacons and lay ministers. Everyone we have met have been super nice so it's made working here a pleasure.

Dan knocking off the side room of the original cabin -
you can see a bit of Lake Huron in the background

But back to the cabin. We started out thinking we were going to replace the roof and take all the old cedar-shake panels off the walls then replace the roof and the panels. But after the building inspector came out, things changed. Yes, the roof was still coming off but we had to tear down three of the original walls and replace them. You wonder why not just tear down all the walls and start over again. Well, that's where local regulations entered the picture. The cagin is located too close to the water for modern set-back laws, but if the cabin was not being completely torn down, it could remain in its current position. So, we had to leave at least one wall and build new walls off of it. What fun!



There goes half of the roof.



But you know what we say about ourselves - “NOMADS are flexible!”

Dan had a company come in to take off the roof. That's was interesting. We all stayed way back out of the way but scrambled like a bunch of busy ants tearing off the roof shingles and tar paper once the roof structure was on the ground. After that, we tore down the old chimney and hauled the bricks across the busy highway to an area behind our Rvs then we got to work tearing down the walls. New walls were built and braced into place, new roof trusses were set in place, and now we are almost done putting the roof sheathing on and should get close to finishing the sheathing on the walls. A lot of work for nine NOMADS and intripid Dan to do in three weeks.



There it goes - flying through the air.  Note how far
back we stayed!

This has been a really nice place for a project. For the most part, the weather here has been great. We've had a few hot days and few rainy and very windy days, but mostly it's been cool. One morning, it was 51 degrees and warmed up to the high 60s by the afternoon. A relief from our hot southern summers and I loved it!

It's been fun driving around this part of Michigan. We even went over to Canada for a day. Let's see, we've been to London, Memphis, Paris, Richmond, Yale, just to name a few of the places we visited. Of course, they were all in a 70 mile radius from Port Huron. And I got to stop in six different quilt shops – one was in an old decommissioned Catholic church, another one was in an old motel (the shop itself took up four or five of the original rooms – fantastic shop), and a couple were in old storefronts in poor downtown areas.



Bill directing the first new roof truss into place

We started packing up this evening; heading out tomorrow evening after we finish working. Need to get to Elkhart, IN by Friday morning to have some problems with the RV resolved. Elkhart is the home for Forest River so we want them to solve our minor problems. Then we head down to Mitchell, IN for another project. That's probably why I'm sitting here composing a blog entry because we packed away the television satellite antenna and don't feel like using the over-the-air antenna (all we can get on it is a couple of Canadian

The cabin starting to take shape with all the new
roof trusses in place and one wall built

channels that we already know we don't like) so it's rather quiet now. Except for Lexi wandering around shaking her dog fur all over everything. Belle is sound asleep in the back on our bed.
And so it goes for another enjoyable NOMADS project.

More later . . .

 

 

p.s. It has taken me forever to get the dumb pictures to download.  For some reason, the "before" pictures I took of the cabin won't download onto this blog.  Frustration personafied!  But I will try to remember to download the pictures I took of the cabin as we finished it at the end of this project then you can really see what we got done.