Lighthouse Village

Holy Cows! It's September already, not just September but the middle of September, we should have been on the road and heading south a week ago, yet we're still here in Homer. Let's see the last time I had a chance to sit down and do a blog entry was right after we bought the lot here at Lighthouse Village (LHV).After our first day on the lot we had to pull the motor home off again so they could cut down a large Ash tree that was dying from the ash borer bug, took two days before we got it back on the slab and set up again. By then the kids had nothing planned for a few days so we brought them out here to mess around, they kept us busy 24/7 until we took them home. Their were a bunch of flower beds that hadn't been attended to for quite a few years so we spent a day digging those out, they were a bunch of Hasta's and a couple of the ladies from the park took them all and replanted them in a different part of the park, so now we're the good guys for donating all the flowers. With that done it was time to drive over and get the kids for another few days, sleeping in the motor home seems to be a little bit topsy turvy to me, Cathy sleeps in the overhead because that's where her CPAP is located. Now Rachel sez that she's to tall for the couch so she sleeps in the overhead with grandma, Nick sez that he's to tall for the couch so he sleeps on the floor with the air mattress with the 4 inch foam pad, umm lets see that means that grandpa fits the couch just right unless I want to try sleeping in the drivers seat. First thing next spring I'm building two bunks in the shed, and I'm making one extra nice since that's where I'll be sleeping most of the summer. I spent a day fixing up an couple of old bikes so the kids will have something to ride when they're out here, it was that or buy a golf cart, got the bikes done just in time because it was the holiday week end and we had the kids for another 5 days. It went buy pretty fast, there's so much going on here that they never had a chance to sit down with the mini golf, swimming pool, hot tub, dry sauna, tennis courts, teen center with a 42 inch flat screen, ping pong, air hockey, soccer table, volley ball and more. One night there was Rocking with the Oldies on the beach, another a Christian Rock band at the club house, teen pizza parties, a fun fair with about 20 different things for them to do including pony rides and a bucking bull ride then they ended it all with an ice cream party. Suz and Don came out Sunday to see the place and have a BBQ on Sunday which saved us a drive back into Wixom. It's just about 90 miles from the kids house to the park , which adds up if you're doing it twice a week, hopefully next summer we'll only be doing it 2 or 3 times a month instead of a week.We finally had two days to ourselves so I got busy and painted the shed, it's only an 8x8 shed but it had been so long since it was last painted that it took over two gallons of paint.About 90% of the people here in the park closed everything down after the Holiday and called it a summer so we pretty much have the park to ourselves. A couple more volley ball games to go to, two doctor appointments one bridal shower and it will be the end of the month before we pull out of here for the season.Here's a few pictures of the park.


Part of the 15 acre Lake Fife.
A section of the pond.
The Pool area.
Our Lighthouse.

Putt Putt.
Welcome Gardens.

Homer is Home

We pulled out of Howe and drove about 50 miles to the Lighthouse Village RV Resort which is just south of Homer Michigan. Ahh but where is Homer Michigan, well that's about 30 miles southwest of Jackson Michigan, if you don't know where Jackson is then get a map.
We were here for a week last year with the grand kids and they absolutely loved it here and have been bugging us ever since to know when we were going back. It's a private Co-Op owned park but is with Coast to Coast, (that's how we got in) there are about 800 sites and it has just about everything you could want. Cathy and I have been thinking about finding a lot in a park in SE Michigan for the last 7 or 8 months, and everything we've priced or looked at was outside our reach.
We grabbed a sales list and spent the first day walking around the park and found three lots that we liked, spent the next two days walking around looking at them and finally we both decided on the one we liked so we put in a bid and it was accepted, we'll be closing on the 22nd. The park is going to trim a few trees for us and then we'll be moving the rig onto the lot. We think that we picked a pretty good location, the kids might not agree since it's about as far from the pool, hot tub, sauna and putt putt golf as you can get.
We figured that over the last 4 years we've spent between $1800 and $2400 a year for camp fees in Michigan while spending the summer with the kids and the parks were all an hour to an hour and 20 minutes drive to there house. Here the Association fee and property taxes come to less the $750 a year, the park is open all year but the water is only on from April 15 to October 15, anything outside this period you can stay for 14 days a month (weird Michigan laws cause this) so we should recover the purchase price in about 4 years.
I took some pictures of the lot but I'm going to wait until we have our rig on the lot, then take some pictures to post.

More when we get it.

Our Brand new 2001 Motor home

After making the kids put up with us for three weeks, we finally packed our bags and drove back over to Edwardsburg to pick up our BRAND NEW 2001 motor home. Yah it's still a 2001 but it sure looks like a 2009 unit. Michele sure did a fabulous job on it, now instead of spending 4 to 8 hours washing it and 4 or 5 days waxing it trying to make it look half way decent all I have to do is hose it down and maybe a light wipe with a microfiber cloth. That alone is worth the price, which was a lot lower then we thought it would be to get this type of paint job.

You can check out Michele's web page here our smiling faces should show up there in a day or two.


Click on the pictures to enlarge.







Of course we picked out the Palms for the back to make it a sort of Signature thing.








After picking up the rig we drove over to a C2C park in Howe Indiana, we're going to rest up for a few days and restock the reefer (had to take everything out while they painted it). It sure is a pain in the butt trying to remember every little thing that you had in the reefer, guess we'll just be adding things to our list for a week or two until we're back on track We bought a big bag of ice to put in the reefer and freezer until it could cool off over night, I put a bag of ice in the freezer on the bottom, well it melted a little until the freezer started cooling and then it refroze to the bottom of the freezer, so I got to defrost the freezer again today, next time it goes on the wire shelf.

Drove over to Elkhart today, they have a couple of RV surplus stores there and I figured I better stock up on a few things, (got a wheel cover to replace the missing one in the picture) Elkhart would qualify to be a Michigan city since every street that you turn on has construction going on and is down to one lane of traffic. We saw the RV Hall of Fame and Museum from the turnpike but I'll be damned if once we got in town that we could find out how to get there, we were in town for about three hours and put 25 miles on the car and never once saw a sign for it or any other tourist type thing. Maybe next time.

Going to head over to Shipshewana tomorrow to see what has changed in the last 20 years, since we were there the last time.