In the summer and fall of 2025 I started devising a plan to buy some rural land in Canada to develop into an off grid homestead. This move was precipitated by two factors in my life at the time. First, was the rapidly deteriorating political landscape inside the “united” states. Second was the fact that a conflict with the electric utility corporation at my property in Ohio was making me feel the need to leave that property. That conflict could be its own whole post andd maybe will be someday. And how badly I really needed to leave is debatable in hindsight. But nonetheless, living in a less fascist country in a more wild part of the world was extremely attractive to me.
In this post I’ll describe the process of finding the land and my first few trips up to it. I’m intentionally not disclosing the exact location of the property for my own privacy.
First Scouting Trip and Failed Offers
The first time I went up to look for properties in the fall of 2025, I took my friend Coach Kevin with me. I had looked at properties all over the great lakes watershed on realtor.ca before going, and called several realtors. As we were driving up, I heard back from a realtor about an hour west of Sault Ste. Marie so we decided to start the search in her neck of the woods on the North side of Lake Huron.
We looked at five different properties. Some of them I had found online, and others she had called to my attention. Some of the best features we liked were rock outcroppings with good views and creek or river access. One particular 80 acre property looked perfect and I offered the full asking price. The realtor told me there were two other offers at the same time so I offered several thousand dollars more, but ended up still being outbid. Disappointing.
While we were walking that property that I offered on, we met the neighbor, Mike, who owned a similar 80 acre lot with a cabin already built on it. We hiked with him a little bit and he mentioned that he might sell his soon. When I told him I got outbid, he and I reached a verbal agreement for me to buy his property with the cabin and all already on it. I was super excited. But when my realtor did the title search, it turned out there was a second person on the title. Mike confirmed it was his nephew who he hadn’t talked to in several years. Ultimately he was unable to reach the nephew and the deal fell apart. Brutal.
Second Scouting Trip and Accepted Offer
After a few more months of looking online, I went back to the same area, again with Coach, and met the same realtor at the very beginning of 2026. We walked two more 80 acre lots side by side. One had township road frontage and the other didn’t. I offered first on the one with frontage and my offer was rejected, and then I offered on the one right next to it. The offer was accepted for just over $50k CAD. The lot is about 60% woods and about 40% wetlands and completely off grid. Accessible via snowmobile paths only for now. The lot is separated from Lake Huron by about 1/4mile of crown land.
When we hiked the property the creeks, wetlands, and lake were frozen and under nearly a meter of snow. It was absolutely beautiful, and we even hiked out to some islands in the lake. Over the next month, I filled boring paperwork and closed the deal remotely.
Solo Visit to My Own Property
I went up again, for the first time since the lad was officially mine, in April of 2026. The snow was almost done melting, and the snowmobile trails were flooded in several spots. There are three trails that promise future access to the lot, but all of them need improvement in some way. I was ultimately unable to pull my 21’ travel trailer onto the lot. But it was still fun to camp nearby and start brainstorming.
One large rock outcropping on the north east corner of the lot is particularly beautiful and a potential place for a future barn or to put the trailer. Two of the existing trails lead to this corner and both have creek crossings and low lying areas that need some moderate improvement.
The third trail leads to the north west corner and does not have any creek crossings, but is somewhat overgrown. A little trimming and chipping would go a long way toward improving this trail.
Camping With the Kids
The next time I went up as in July. This time I took both my kids and my dad for a good old family camping trip. We towed my trailer to about a quarter mile from the property and began exploring the aforementioned trails, as well as the township road. The road is mostly nice enough, but the last 3/4mile that leads to lake huron is somewhat overgrown, and has a few flooded areas due to beaver activity.
Preparation
We practiced camping in the yard at home several times at home. We also talked about hiking and improving trails and practiced hiking at local nature preserves. We talked about fun aspects of camping like cooking over a fire, pooping in a hole, seeing stars, and bathing in the lake. We read books about camping. Finally I got each kid their own compass which they thought was really fun. We didn’t end up blazing any trails on this trip, but they still liked following which direction we were going on existing trails and on the drives.
Driving Up
The kids spent the night at my parents house the night before we left. I met them there mid morning and played with them and the cousins for a while before leaving around 11:00. The highlights of the drive were crossing the Macinac Bridge and visiting the Soo Locks just before the border crossing. The bridge was not quite as cool as usual because there was a ton of smoke from nearby wild fires, but we were still really excited for them to finally be seeing it with their own eyes.
We visited the Soo Locks visitor center. Highlights there were a relief map of the depths of th great lakes, and a hands on model of how locks work. We spent the night in Sault Ste. Marie Michigan, right by the border and prepared to enter Canada early the next day.
Setting Up
The border crossing was easy. The only new questions I got were, “The kids have never been to Canada, eh?” and “Hi kids, when did you see mom last?”. As soon as we got into Canada, we stopped at a casino to change a little bit of cash to CAD. Around this time I realized my first big mistake. I forgot the keys to the trailer at home. We went grocery shopping at Giant Tigre in the Sault and got food for the week, plus delicious wine gums, and long sleeve jackets for the kids from the clearance rack.
We continued to the outdoor storage on St Joseph Island where I had left the trailer back in April. This was a longer stop than planned because of the forgotten keys, but still pretty successful overall. We broke into the cargo area through a side panel which goes under the queen bed. Then we knocked out a wall of 1/4" plywood to access another under-bed storage area that is accessible from the inside. From there it was just a matter of pushing up the mattress and climbing inside, but that was harder than it sounds because the mattress is super heavy. Dad was both strong enough to lift the mattress and thin enough to squeeze through so he had the honors of doing the crawling. After he got inside and opened the main doors, the kids also wanted to crawl through so we moved the mattress and let them do it. We had a picnic on a flatbed trailer that was stored next to mine before heading over to the camp site.
Camping Out
When we got close to the property, we parked the trailer right in the middle of the township road and hiked one of the trails toward the Northwest corner. It was much drier than in April, but it turned out the creeks were not seasonal and there were still two creek crossings. We decided that we weren’t getting the trailer in that night and decided to cook hotdogs and smores over the fire for dinner. After dinner we towed the trailer a little further down the road to a clearing that is about 1/4mile off my property and set up camp.
Later that first night Forest and I went outside to look at stars and got a really good show. We saw Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Milky Way, a spacecraft, an airplane, Cassiopeia, and The Pleiades. Then snuggled and snacked on cheetos before going back to bed.
Over the following days we hiked the same trail again as well as a few others exploring the various terrain and brainstorming about what kind of improvement we might do on them. It became clear that most of the actual improvement would happen on a future trip without kids, but we made small bits of progress and did a lot of learning and had fun hiking. At rock outcroppings, the kids enjoyed kicking moss, and making pretend food out of broken off pieces of rock.
At one point we hiked down the road to find the flooded area behind a beaver dam. I carried Riley to the dam while Forest carefully felt his way through the beaver pond, carefully testing each spot with a shovel before committing to stepping in it, and dad waited just before the pond. The beavers had dammed the large ditches on both sides of the road, and even built a small dam across the road. We wanted to drain it low enough to get the road accessible again. Riley and I dug the first drain right on the edge of the road, but then she took a scary step where she almost fell on her booty and wanted to go, so she went back to camp with dad. Forest and I dug two larger drains above each ditch and watched a ton of water run over. The next day the water had fallen by about two inches. But the beavers had already begun to repair the drains. I’ll need to install some beaver deceivers in the future to get the road passable again.
We also spent time cooking in the camper, tent camping, running around the clearing, shoveling sand into and out of the wheelbarrow, and breaking open rocks with a hammer. Fun kid stuff.
Around Town
We also spent some time in the nearby town getting familiar with it and what it has to offer. There is a small library, a really nice park at the beach, a grocery store, a hospital, a few restaurants, a frisbee golf course, a hotel where dad camped, and ice cream shop, a school with good playground equipment, a lighthouse, and surely more that we didn’t find yet.
Forest and I biked from the campsite into town at one point. We rode a total of 12 miles. It would have been less, but we decided to check out an alternate route that we saw on the map only to find it was too overgrown to bike, and then backtracked to the trans Canada highway.
Driving Home
When it was time to go we packed up the camper and stored it back at St Joseph Island. I’ll try to remember the keys next time. Then we stopped at Giant Tiger for more win gums and the duty free shop for souvenirs, both of which Forest paid for with his own Canadian money. The bridge crossing took over an hour, but then we were cruising. We got a much better view from the Macinac Bridge this time. And we met Mike Andrews in Bay City and he hitched a ride home with us.
Overall, a really fun and successful camping trip.