Crane's Landing at Three Rivers

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Crane's Landing at Three Rivers 👷building a cordwood sauna 🛖rehabbing an old cabin🏚️ learning, doing, teaching, shenanigans

It’s been a very busy month, but we managed to squeeze in a weekend of serious mortaring. Now, the only thing that stand...
16/09/2024

It’s been a very busy month, but we managed to squeeze in a weekend of serious mortaring. Now, the only thing that stands between us and a finished sauna is the gap at the top of the front wall!

Saturday was the last day of the cordwood workshops for me, before getting on the road back to Chicago this morning. We ...
18/08/2024

Saturday was the last day of the cordwood workshops for me, before getting on the road back to Chicago this morning. We mixed up a batch of refractory mortar and started working on the stone wall behind the sauna stove. We also got a visit from adorable baby goats, leading to a lot of whimsical speculation about future Goat Cordwood Classes. We finished off the day with a floating sauna on Lake Superior 🤩 It was absolute perfection!!

Our second set of cordwood workshops kicked off today and things are off to a great start! Charlie and Dave installed so...
17/08/2024

Our second set of cordwood workshops kicked off today and things are off to a great start! Charlie and Dave installed some tarps to keep us dry and comfortable in rainy weather. Debbie delivered and debarked some wonderful cedar logs from the UP. We made adjustments to our mortar mix to account for the coarse sand we’ve been working with. And all the students picked up mortaring techniques really quickly and started building some truly gorgeous walls!!

I adore birch trees so I was excited to see big stacks of birch wood pretty much everywhere I looked in Canada, includin...
17/08/2024

I adore birch trees so I was excited to see big stacks of birch wood pretty much everywhere I looked in Canada, including the lobby of my hotel! On my way out of Ontario, I visited Kakabeka Falls and enjoyed stunning views of the Kaministiquia River from the boardwalk hiking trail. I also stopped by the Pigeon River on the Canadian side of the border. There’s a little footpath just off the main road that leads to a rocky cliff overlooking Middle Falls!

After crossing the border back into Minnesota, I drove to the Grand Portage National Monument. There, I visited the North West Company’s Depot, a reconstructed fur trading post. I talked with living history interpreters at the Great Hall, Kitchen, and Canoe Warehouse. I also got to see a reconstructed Ojibwe village, dock, gardens, and an outdoor stone oven. I love places where you can literally touch and feel history — absolutely worth a visit!!

On Wednesday morning, I took a little road trip from Grand Marais, Minnesota to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Along the way, I s...
16/08/2024

On Wednesday morning, I took a little road trip from Grand Marais, Minnesota to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Along the way, I stopped at Judge C.R. Magney State Park and hiked to the Upper Falls and the Devil’s Kettle. I walked along the rocky beach at Horseshoe Bay. I saw Minnesota’s tallest waterfall at the Grand Portage State Park. And I crossed the Pigeon River International Bridge into Canada and enjoyed a Maple Whiskey Sour, smoked with cedar wood chips, at The Industry Social House 🇨🇦🍁🥃

We have spent a couple of lovely days in Grand Marais in between our two cordwood workshops. I got to hike the Grand Mar...
14/08/2024

We have spent a couple of lovely days in Grand Marais in between our two cordwood workshops. I got to hike the Grand Marais breakwater trail, see the lighthouse, tour the North House Folk School campus, canoe in the Boundary Waters on Magnetic Lake, and try some delicious fish, beer, and lingonberries. Five stars!!

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 3: We were fortunate enough to have beautiful sunny weather as we wrapped up our firs...
12/08/2024

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 3: We were fortunate enough to have beautiful sunny weather as we wrapped up our first workshop. We built and installed a large window box and kept raising up our walls. We made lots of progress and plans for future projects. It was a wonderful time!

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 2: We are trying out a different mortar recipe for this class—6 parts sand, 2 parts P...
11/08/2024

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 2: We are trying out a different mortar recipe for this class—6 parts sand, 2 parts Portland cement, 2 parts lime, and 4 parts soaked sawdust. The sand we are using is also much coarser than the fine mortaring sand we’ve had in the past. As a result, the mortar initially felt very different to me and took a couple of batches to get used to. But, eventually, I got the hang of it, and I’m really enjoying working with it now. It holds its shape really well and the coarse sand grains add beautiful flecks of color. I’m really interested to see what it looks like after it has a few days to set.

We topped off a fun day of mortaring with the most amazing set of activities you can imagine! We visited Camp Menogyn, hung out with baby goats, took a boat ride to a sauna house, enjoyed a sauna, and went swimming in Bearskin Lake. Then, I had beer and meatballs for dinner. BEST. DAY. EVER.

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 1: I am so excited about this sauna design!!! For the first time, we are using square...
10/08/2024

Grand Marais Cordwood Workshop Day 1: I am so excited about this sauna design!!! For the first time, we are using square shaped timber cut-offs; wood ends that might otherwise be discarded as milling waste. Instead, we are turning them into a unique and beautiful cordwood building! Woohoo!!!

We spent the morning working on lots of cordwood basics, including making bottle logs, treating wood with borax, and making keys using furring strips and roofing nails. We mixed up our first batch of mortar this afternoon and got started on the bottom row of the wall. It looks so cool already, I cannot wait to build more tomorrow! 💪 😃 🪵

Successful journey through Wisconsin and Minnesota today! Excited for the cordwood workshop tomorrow!!                  ...
09/08/2024

Successful journey through Wisconsin and Minnesota today! Excited for the cordwood workshop tomorrow!!

The weather was lovely and we made good progress on our sauna this weekend. Tomorrow, I’m heading up to help out at anot...
07/08/2024

The weather was lovely and we made good progress on our sauna this weekend. Tomorrow, I’m heading up to help out at another cordwood workshop in Grand Marais, Minnesota!

We now have a wonderful fire pit thanks to Kris and Nick! Perfect for bonfires, s’mores, and burning stuff 😁🔥
21/07/2024

We now have a wonderful fire pit thanks to Kris and Nick! Perfect for bonfires, s’mores, and burning stuff 😁🔥

While I was working on the sauna, a small family of birds decided to move in near the rafters. I’ll probably need to evi...
16/07/2024

While I was working on the sauna, a small family of birds decided to move in near the rafters. I’ll probably need to evict them at some point, but I feel bad… we clearly share an interest in building homes out of sticks and mud!!

Rainy day cordwood activity: cutting wine bottles with a tile saw
11/07/2024

Rainy day cordwood activity: cutting wine bottles with a tile saw

The weather has been terrible. The brakes on my car almost went out. The basement is slightly flooded again. But every d...
10/07/2024

The weather has been terrible. The brakes on my car almost went out. The basement is slightly flooded again. But every day, I keep adding to this wall bit by bit. Because it sure will be nice to have a sauna next time there’s a downpour 🌧️ 🔥 🧖‍♀️

Mixed up some mortar. Worked on the back wall and side corner of the sauna. Survived a minor bee attack (they mostly got...
06/07/2024

Mixed up some mortar. Worked on the back wall and side corner of the sauna. Survived a minor bee attack (they mostly got Nick). Progress!!

Getting ready to get back to mortaring, at last!!
03/07/2024

Getting ready to get back to mortaring, at last!!

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Our Story

It was December 2019 when we found ourselves in St. Joseph County for the first time.

For nearly a year, we – me (Monika), my husband Nick, and my best friend Kris, had been searching for a place where we could build or rehab a cabin to use as a vacation home and, eventually, as a rental property. We wanted something on the waterfront, driving distance from Chicago, big enough to support multiple cabins (if things went well with the first one!), and secluded yet still close to shopping, dining, and recreation.

But after months of poring over real estate listings, driving all over Wisconsin and Michigan, studying plats, looking at flood maps, and trying to make sense of building codes, we were beginning to wonder if the place we were looking for simply didn’t exist.

Needing a break, Nick and I packed up our family and drove to a lake house we had just rented for a couple of nights near Three Rivers, Michigan. It was an unfamiliar place that we selected based on the sound, well-researched reason that pretty much everything else was booked solid right before New Year’s Eve.