“This is Aaron from the DNR Forestry Office in Grand Marais. I wanted to give you a heads-up that there was a fire discovered yesterday just North of your property up by Bogus Lake.”

Things are really happening.
Building an off-grid cabin on our property on Bogus Lake near Grand Marais has been a dream for a long time. While we didn’t build in 2023 as originally hoped, we’ve made a lot of progress and this may finally be the year.

Last Friday night the weather conditions were exactly right at Bogus Lake for growing amazing needles of frost. The ridge was in the clouds most of the night and just below freezing with the slightest breeze bringing moisture up from Lake Superior, over 1,000 feet of elevation below.

We’ve been thinking about building a cabin on our Bogus Lake property for a quarter century. Given my desire to have hot showers and toilets that flush, for a long time it seemed like this dream would be impractical given the cost and environmental impact of either bringing in a power line or using a generator.

But over the past few years, the cost of both solar panels and battery banks have dropped dramatically. The results of a feasibility study showed that we can actually power and heat an off-grid cabin using nothing but the sun and good design. So we are finally moving forward.