Welcome to #CountdownToHalloween2024 !!!!

 

Welcome to the Blog of Maple Grove Cemetery! 

My name is Lisa and I am the caretaker of the Maple Grove Cemetery.  

The story of how the cemetery came about is in the right sidebar. 

The cemetery is currently under construction!

Marvin is my foreman.

I just checked and this my 13th year of participating in the Countdown to Halloween !  (with varying degrees of success, of course).  I'm hoping this will be one of the better ones. 

Hi, I'm Chuck!

I enjoy exploring real cemeteries, so I'll have Cemetery Tuesday posts.  I'll post about Chuck's shenanigans, explore some other displays, attend some events and basically write about whatever floats my boat at the moment.  

Hope you come along for the ride! 

And just for fun - let's look at the long range weather forecast. 

Perfection!

Now if it only stays like that.

It's Autumn!!!!

Chuck also celebrates Truck Driver Appreciation!

Since I've worked for a trucking company over 24 years now.

So the Spawn and I were finishing up the epitaphs on the headstones after repainting...

I turned one of the stones around and found this guy....

He was gently relocated thru the back fence into our neighbors woodpile, since honestly - I think if I heard / felt / saw that body squish I would throw up! 

The Grandson and I went to the store one day and he asked me about listening to Halloween songs!  XM doesn't have the Halloween stations going yet, but I thought that it was funny that this song had just started, tho!

I apparently don't have pics, but I got the pieces cut out & painted to make the floodlight blinders - I don't know what else to call them!  This is my inspiration pic that I took while exploring Tillson St last year. 

Mine are pretty similar (I'm making 3) except the side pieces are the same size and will be put together with a V shaped top piece. 

I also got the headstone cut out & sealed for the Spouse's car that was in an accident this summer. 

It took a few sketches, but we finally settled on a shape that he liked.   I'll have that done probably today, weather permitting. 

Yesterday was Exhumation Day!

We dug the skeletons out of the back of the garage.  

So now this is what the patio looks like. 

We dodged raindrops putting stuff back into the garage, but the big guys are out! 

And we remembered that all the little skeletons were tossed in boxes with the cows. 

These are the ducklings, squirrels, a random turtle, bats, a piglet, puppy & kitten.

Oh, and an iguana.  And a piranha.  How did I end up with 2 owls? 

I'll have to do a full inventory just to see what I actually have. 

On the agenda for this week is taking the grandkids to the apple orchard Wednesday with their daycare classes because the Spawn, aka their mom, has to work at said daycare and they'd rather go with me than one of their teachers.  Then we need to get the blowmolds out, cleaned up and lights checked out (which I hate doing!!) and the critter skeletons out of the shed.

   

Because....

OMG!!

I feel behind already so do I really want to wait until this weekend to start setting up??

And just for fun, let's check the weather!

Of course this will change 783 times before Halloween actually gets here....

That looks to be pretty close to perfect!  Fingers crossed it stays that way!

But since we're in Michigan - we'll probably have a blizzard.  

Vacation!

Besides a trip to the Detroit Zoo on Labor Day - Chuck went on vacation!

 

His Michigan Hand-Map isn't as good as a real hand, but we decided to go spend a couple days in the Petoskey area.  

Just me & the Spouse (and Chuck!)

We got to the hotel Wednesday and if we leaned out over the balcony, we could see both the sunset and Little Traverse Bay. 

Right across the street was a local restaurant that claimed to have famous pumpkin pancakes - so I had to try them out.  

Fantastic! 

If you ever have the chance to go to JW Filmore's for breakfast - I highly recommend the biscuits & gravy!  

This bear has seen some things! 

Next we followed a Chuck's truck almost all the way to Petoskey State Park. 

Very soft sand!

This is also Little Traverse Bay. 

Still cold, tho! 

Next stop was Wilderness State Park, which isn't too far from Mackinaw City. 

This was a couple mile drive back into the park.  

We sat on the bench and enjoyed the breeze and sounds of the waves. 

This trail is off the parking area by the sign.  

If you look really close, you can see the Mackinac Bridge! 

Next we went thru this place called Cross Village and stopped to explore a couple cemeteries.  This one belongs to the Odawa (Ottawa) Indian tribe.  

It was actually sort of creepy, since none of the white crosses had names, and other than the few military stones, the few actual stones all belonged to women.  And a lot of crosses were in the woods!  

We made our first trip to Spirit Halloween!

It's really early in the year, but we drove the Tunnel of Trees.

It's only about 5% color, but still nice. 

We drove down toward Charlevoix and stopped at an overlook area called Big Rock Site.

It was really windy! 

The breeze off Lake Michigan was strong!

We took advantage of our state park pass and went to visit Fisherman's Island State Park. 

Waiting for the Spouse to catch up....

We finally started getting cold. 

So we went and got ice cream!

We are here!

We checked off 2 more of the real Maple Grove cemeteries in the state. 

There are 32!  

We've been to all the purple ones. 

When we got home, I thought I'd better start getting some decorations out in the front yard. 

I love this sign!

I'll put a couple more things out here & there - the skeletons are going to be dug out of the garage this weekend.  Hopefully me & the Spawn will have all the headstones painted and can get them out of the way.  Right now they're scattered all over the patio.  The plan is to start official set up on the 28th/29th.

Oh, good news!

The Disco Ball Skeleton finally came in!

And since we have literally 4 truck (or trunk) or treat events to attend this year, it's going to get some exposure!   It's a fabulous!

OMG - 45 days!!