This afternoon Cindy and I will be closing on our piece of paradise, 23 acres in the vicinity of Lake City, Minnesota. About 8 acres of cleared meadow 400 feet above the Mississippi River valley and another 15 acres of sloping woodlands, some to the valley floor below.
I retired after 10 years of teaching at a university in the Twin Cities just at the end of May. Cindy and I had never been "cabin people" -- many people here in Minnesota have a place in a city and then a "cabin" on a lake somewhere, usually "up north". Cindy's family had a lake place when she was growing up and, during that time, it was great. It turned into a real maintenance headache for her dad and brother, though, and we thought we'd avoid that and "rent" places at the lake or elsewhere when we wanted to get away. We've lived in Mendota Heights, a southeastern suburb of Saint Paul, for almost 27 years, in a house that is now pretty empty and way too big. We've enjoyed living here, in some ways, but never really felt we "fit in" amongst the executive types that make up most of the neighborhood. The question of what to do next went through many iterations over the last number of years. At first a configuration including a 2-bedroom condo in the Cities and somewhere that our sons would want to aggregate as a family on a regular basis. The North Shore of Lake Superior, the Rockies, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the White Mountains, and the Sierras all took their turns as possibilities for the "family oasis".
We shifted gears, then, to a philosophy without trying a pick a place that our sons and their significant others would want to come, with and/or without us and focus more on "family trips" every few years, similar to our trips to Germany and Hawaii in the past. I had never envisioned a "down sized" environment for my retirement; many people want to travel this path and for a while Cindy thought that was the way we were going as well. However, my vision of retirement was one focused on getting back in sync with the seasons of the land and "fix it rather than throw it" lifestyle as well as have plenty of room for my more technical hobbies. At the time that we first saw The Meadows, our plan was to get our home ready to sell, find a condo in the Cities to maintain our social network there, find a farm within 2-2.5 hours of the condo, in Wisconsin part The Driftless area, put the house on the market, and start our "cabin life retirement" with a farm rather than a lake place.
What happened then? Stay tuned for the next installment...
I retired after 10 years of teaching at a university in the Twin Cities just at the end of May. Cindy and I had never been "cabin people" -- many people here in Minnesota have a place in a city and then a "cabin" on a lake somewhere, usually "up north". Cindy's family had a lake place when she was growing up and, during that time, it was great. It turned into a real maintenance headache for her dad and brother, though, and we thought we'd avoid that and "rent" places at the lake or elsewhere when we wanted to get away. We've lived in Mendota Heights, a southeastern suburb of Saint Paul, for almost 27 years, in a house that is now pretty empty and way too big. We've enjoyed living here, in some ways, but never really felt we "fit in" amongst the executive types that make up most of the neighborhood. The question of what to do next went through many iterations over the last number of years. At first a configuration including a 2-bedroom condo in the Cities and somewhere that our sons would want to aggregate as a family on a regular basis. The North Shore of Lake Superior, the Rockies, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the White Mountains, and the Sierras all took their turns as possibilities for the "family oasis".
We shifted gears, then, to a philosophy without trying a pick a place that our sons and their significant others would want to come, with and/or without us and focus more on "family trips" every few years, similar to our trips to Germany and Hawaii in the past. I had never envisioned a "down sized" environment for my retirement; many people want to travel this path and for a while Cindy thought that was the way we were going as well. However, my vision of retirement was one focused on getting back in sync with the seasons of the land and "fix it rather than throw it" lifestyle as well as have plenty of room for my more technical hobbies. At the time that we first saw The Meadows, our plan was to get our home ready to sell, find a condo in the Cities to maintain our social network there, find a farm within 2-2.5 hours of the condo, in Wisconsin part The Driftless area, put the house on the market, and start our "cabin life retirement" with a farm rather than a lake place.
What happened then? Stay tuned for the next installment...
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