Callie Anderson tours her family's remote log cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, built by her grandfather decades ago. The cabin sits on a dirt road surrounded by wildlife, with solar panels and a wood stove for heat. She shows the mudroom, kitchen, bedrooms, and family traditions like hunting trips and trophy deer displays.
I am in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at my family's cabin. My grandpa built this in the early '90s, and they come up here to deer hunt, and I've been coming here since I was a very little girl before I could even walk. We call our cabin Double C Camp, and it's a very special place. For my family. So today I'm going to give you a tour of our cabin. As you can see, this cabin is very remote. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. We only have dirt roads and trails leading to this cabin, so when the weather is not good, it's very hard getting back here. It's very peaceful. Because it's so quiet out here, but sometimes it can be a little bit scary because if there's ever an emergency, there's no hospital nearby. You're out of luck. This is our shed where we store our ATVs. So my grandparents use ATVs to go to their blinds to deer hunt. And they're very fun to ride. I've ridden ATVs since I was a little girl. We also have a bonfire pit where my family and our friends all like to gather around the fire, have some drinks, and roast some marshmallows. We have trails in the front of our cabin and in the back of our cabin, so we like to take walks out in nature. But you have to be careful sometimes because there is a lot of wildlife in the area. There are deer, bears, and they've even spotted a wolf out here before. So you just have to stay alert if you go for a walk. We love to spend time outside here because the air is very fresh, and at night you get a beautiful view of the stars. They look unreal up here, but right now it's a bit chilly, so let's head inside. This is the entryway of the cabin. So we have a mudroom here where it's just a lot of storage, and we keep tools in here, extra snacks, jackets, shoes, lots of storage here. Then it opens up to the living room and the kitchen. We spend a lot of time in here. My grandma cooks very delicious food, so we eat really well up here. I love it because I have a lot of memories having big meals with all of my family here. Even though we're far out in the woods, we still have all the comforts of home here. We have electricity, running water, and these days we can even watch TV here and make phone calls. When I was younger, we weren't able to do that, but now everything is running on solar panels, propane, a generator, so we've got all of our bases covered here. The cabin is always so cozy. The whole thing is heated by this wood stove here. We use real logs to put in the fire, and it keeps the cabin so warm. Even in the dead of winter, you can stay very warm in this cabin. Now I'm in the living room, which is also where we spend a lot of time while visiting the cabin. We've got, um, somebody's sleeping here, our cutest cabin resident. Actually, I take that back. Our cutest cabin resident is right here. The queen of the cabin, my grandma Shirley. And then this is the man, the legend who built the cabin, my grandpa. Hello everyone! This is my granddaughter. Woo woo! I love her. We love spending time together up here. It's really nice unplugging for a little while and spending good quality time together. I mentioned before that my grandma and grandpa love to hunt up here during hunting season, and you can see some of their trophy deer hanging on the wall. We've got my grandma's deer here. We've got my grandpa's deer here. If you take a look around the cabin, you'll see all kinds of deer heads and antlers. They shoot the deer and then they eat the deer meat, which is called venison. That's quite a popular thing to do here in Michigan. Off of the living room, there's a door to go outside to the deck. This is where we stack wood for the wood stove to heat the cabin, and we also have a grill here. When the weather is a bit better, we have a barbecue, so we'll grill hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, steaks, all kinds of delicious food on the grill. Here there's a clearing in the woods, and when I was growing up, my grandparents would put a salt lick out there for the deer to come eat. So sometimes standing right on the deck or looking out the cabin window, you could see deer come out into the clearing. We'd always use binoculars and get a good view of the deer here. And over here we have a small hill. When we would come in the wintertime, it would be so snowy and we would sled down this little hill. We'd ride the sled down and run back up and go again. It was a lot of fun. We have 2 bedrooms downstairs. So this is the first one. All of my luggage is in it right now, so don't judge. So guests can sleep in this bedroom. Okay. Next to it is the bathroom. When I was very young here, we had an outhouse because they didn't have a working toilet, so we had to go to the bathroom outside, which was not an ideal situation. So now it's nice, there's a working toilet and a working shower with hot water. We don't have to rough it as much up here anymore. Look at this, 1996. We used to measure ourselves every time we came up to the cabin. My cousins, my sister, and I would all mark our heights on this wooden post. So here it says Callie. I was this tall in 1996. So my last measurement was here in 2004. Have I grown? That looks taller than you. You got shorter? No, I got a little taller. Maybe 1 inch. They made their own pulley system to dry their clothes. They use this rope to lift their clothes up and hang them close to the ceiling because heat rises. The last room downstairs is the master bedroom. This is where my grandma and grandpa sleep. This is their hot water heater so we can take hot showers if we want to. This is a lifesaver. Now I'm going upstairs. The stairs are quite steep, so you have to be careful coming up. When I was a kid, upstairs was my favorite part of the cabin. My cousins and my sister and I thought of upstairs like our own fort. So you can see we even have signs here that we made when we were young. It says, "Caution, hyper children," and knock hand here. Ta-da! Welcome to the upstairs. When I was a kid, we would have 5 families come up here together, so all the kids would be playing up here and would sleep up here. This one used to be my favorite because it's tucked away like a special little hiding spot. The cabin is a very special place for our family, so I hope you enjoyed the tour of our log cabin in the woods. I will be interviewing my grandpa who built this cabin with his bare hands. So make sure to stay tuned. I will see you next time. Goodbye!
