Getting rained out at Scott’s annual Mille lace lake windsurfing race , we thought it would be a good time to do some exploring of Northern Minnesota lake lots. Already half way up north and having recently received some advertising for Lake lots offered for sale we thought why not. We had nothing else to do while we were waiting for the rain to quit.
What we were not ready for, was how much money they cost and how big a demand there was for them. We also did not have any intention of buying one that day. We still had our other lake lot and no extra cash.
When we arrived at the lots for sale we saw lots of real-estate signs and people along the road. We stopped to look around and ran into a real-estate sales person. We asked about the lots and he said they had just gone on the market and most of them were already sold.
He then told us about a lot that was sold, but just went back on the market yesterday when the buyer could not get money arranged. We went to look at it and absolutely fell in love with it “Just got to have it” The real-estate person returned to his original customer, but he had given Scott and I his phone number to call him if we were interested.
After a couple of hours of exploring the remaining lots as well as the newly returned lot we decided we should try to buy the returned lot. We called the cell phone number on the card we received, and got a hold of the real-estate man. We made plans to meet him in an hour at a restaurant a few miles down the road.
He told us the seller would do a contract for deed for the purchase. Now that was great with us as it would give us time to figure out how we were going to pay for it! Because at that moment we did not have a clue how we were going to do that.
“WE BOUGHT IT “ off we go to the liquor store for a bottle of wine to celebrate then back to our new lot. We were very excited about our new found dream!
One of the reasons we just had to have it was it is such a great area! Walking and biking tracks along with the Paul Bunyan State Forest were just outside our door.
This new dream lot was a about a 4 hour drive one way, from where we lived and where our our jobs were. It was already September in Minnesota which means that the weather can get bad anytime, so we were sad leaving because it would be awhile before we would see our new dream lot again.
Since life had other plans for us that we did not know about at the time, it tuned out to be a lot longer than we thought.
Life Interferes with dreams
October of that year a mere month after we bought our new lot we were offered an enticing work assignment in Europe that we accepted. We put everything we had up for sale except our new found dream lot.
When our other lake place sold right away we paid our new lot off with the money we got from the sale . Funny how things just fall into place sometimes in life. We put our new lake dream on the hold, and went off to explore Europe. See our Europe adventures for more on that.
Four year Later 2001 Part II
Returning to Minnesota after three years of working in Europe, and one in Colorado our next assignment was in Minneapolis. We were not that excited about returning to Minnesota, but we were excited about getting back to our lake dreams. It did not take us long to get “Up North” to our lot. Even thought it was a six hour drive round trip from Minneapolis.
Our first goal was to try and clean up just enough brush, and dead trees so we could start enjoying weekends there in the summer.
It was memorial day weekend and we had just bought a new Sunnybrook travel trailer. I called her my little home. It was a bit ugly getting the trailer into the spot where we wanted it, or to look like the picture in the middle. We just loved our little setup.
Now we have a place to call home at the lake again
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Scott had a lot of tools and we were paying for a shed in town to store some of our stuff, so the next goal was to build a shed at the lake. Weekend after weekend we drove the six hour round-trip drive to the lake to build our shed. Now we had a place to live, and a place to store our “STUFF” again.
You cannot have a lake lot without a boat, that’s what Scott says anyway. This time we are thinking about retiring here part time so we wanted a boat that was easy to take care of. Scott thinks we might want to fish more than ski in the years ahead, so we bought a good all around family boat. OMG we have a family boat! Who would have thought!
Now if we are going to have a boat we will certainly have to have a garage to store it in! Off we go on another dream to build a garage. Scott was doing all the work himself with only a weeks vacation for the shell. Then weekend, after weekend, all summer we drove the six hour round-trip drive to the lake to finish our garage and get it done before winter. I also would like to thank Scott’s, Mother and Father for helping and especially the food they brought. Now we have a nice garage!
Now we need to easily get down the hill to the lake. Maybe their will be time to enjoy the lake in the years ahead. Scott set out to build steps “Scott what a builder you are”
So far all this time we have been carrying water, and cleaning up by the lake. We thought it was time to get a well in. We found a great well driller and it made life in our little house so much easier “running water can you imagine that" 
Now its 2008. Its been 7 years getting us to where we are at. I spared you “the dirty bad and the ugly details” that took up about three years.
We do not get much company at the lake up north. Summers are so short in Minnesota and its too far for most people to drive. Scott’s mother and father always try to come once a year and we always have good time with them. Here we are having happy hour on the end of our dock.
