First Homes We Viewed After Arriving in Bellaire

                                   Saturday 5/24/2014

The day we arrived in Bellaire, we called a FSBO to see a house on Torch Lake. The owner had moved to Texas, and was leaving the next day, to go back south, so we arranged to see the home the day we arrived. The home needed a lot of work inside, but it could sleep up to 14 people in it's loft bedrooms.

It is a pretty wooded location, so not much sun for the garden I want to have. You would get great sunsets being it is on the east side of Torch Lake. The price is a bit high for us, so it would have to come down quite a bit before we would consider it.

As we drove back to camp, we drove past the home I wanted to see, when we got here. Unfortunately it sold in March.

It had awesome views of Torch Lake and sat on 2 acres of land. With it not sitting on Torch Lake, the price was well affordable and had much lower taxes.

The next day we went to an open house of a very small 1000 sq foot home that sat across the street from Intermediate Lake. It had 2 bedrooms and a very small bathroom (Our Nest has a bigger sink and shower than this house did). It did have a nice 2 car garage, mudroom and a small front porch and was at the end of the road (so little to no traffic). All this for less than $100,000.

Across the street you had a shared dock for your boat. The other negative other than a small house, was that it was on Intermediate Lake which is a smaller lake so Joe wouldn't have as much fun exploring. ( Now that I am taking his USA country exploring away from him he wants a big lake to  live on). If we could add on, it could be a possibility.

The next day we drove north 45 minutes to the quaint town of Boyne City. We got there 10 minutes early, so we drove to a private marina. This mama duck and her babies were hanging out on someones boat.

I had found this property on the internet in Boyne City. It was on 13 acres.

It had this awesome view of Lake Charlevoix out the back window of the house, and was two blocks from the Boyne City center.

Because it had over 10 acres, I could have chickens and goats if I wanted. The only kicker was that the house had not been lived in for 20 years and needed a ton of work to get it to where we would live in it, by the time we put in the money to get it liveable, we would be above our max budget.

We could sub divide 3 acres and sell them off to help bring the cost down, but sub dividing can get costly. This would be our drive out to a main city road. At the end of our land we would turn left and go 2 blocks to Boyne City and Lake Charlevoix.

On our south route back to Bellaire, we went past many fields of what we think were cherry trees.

King Orchards was one of the many orchard farms in this area.