My Happy Place

My wife and I left a day early for Memorial Day weekend.  Last summer, we rehabbed an old family owned cabin in Grand Marais, MN.  This was our first year opening up post rehab.  If I ever retire, this is where I will spend four months of the year.

Needless to say we were excited to get here.

I can understand how my grandfather, who built his cabin in 1974 next door to mine, must have felt each year.  The drive up.  A stop at Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors and if you are really early World’s Best in Grand Marais. We stop at a supermarket in Silver Bay called Zup’s where you can get awesome sausages and bacon.   Get on the dirt road (assess condition of road and hope no trees are down).  Then you pull into the parking lot and hope.

The cabin is smack dab in the middle of the boreal forest.  I love the boreal forest.  It’s so peaceful, and it can be delightfully surprising.  You will turn your head and catch a glimpse of an animal.  Was it a moose?   A deer?  A lynx, mink or fox?  Or a bear?

Fortunately for us, the cabin only shifted a little.  We had no mice (praise the Lord) and no plumbing leaks.  Our new Franklin stove pipe didn’t leak and the person we hired to install it reblacked the stove so it looks great.  Unfortunately he passed away suddenly last April.  Our roof seems to be in good shape.  We put a ceiling fan in and thankfully it works since it was 85 degrees up here!  Everything seems to be in proper order.  The electric we put in and the internet is working fine.

We got it opened up and now it’s time for a little fun before we go home on Monday.  We will be back up over the Fourth of July.

The place is not a palace if you are thinking “luxury home”.  It’s only 625 square feet.  We don’t have a dishwasher.  We do them by hand.  We have an outhouse and use it in the day.  We chop wood and burn it for heat.  We don’t have a television.  We put together the lowest priced IKEA cabinets and they work great.  Our bed is from IKEA too but the mattress isn’t.  As one of the contractors who worked on it last summer said, “It’s cherry.”

Oh, and the dock I rebuilt made it through the winter. Now to get the boat motor running so my uncle and I can go fishing.  It’s exactly 19 feet to the water.  There are walleye in it.

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A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on May 25, 2018 at 8:57am PDT