The Wish List

by R -husband & dad

So we've been talking about a vacation house since probably 1999 when we started squirreling away silverware and old wine glasses.   For a while we dreamed about a Cape house but recently we've been looking into ski houses as well.  Eventually we decided that the best option for us was to have a lake house that was close to skiing.

The Wish List:

1. Waterfront property.  Literally we want a place where we can easily see the water. Oh and we also need to be able to waterski on the lake.
2. Close to a ski mountain.  Needs to be less than 30 minutes away.
3. Under 2.5 hours from our house.
4. Needs to be a year round cottage.   Roads need to be maintained in winter. 
5. Needs to feel like a cottage. 
6. Needs to be in our price range.

All these items made it pretty challenging to find a place.    For months we sat on the couch at night scouring the internet for houses on our laptops only to say - too far, too much money, too ugly etc.

One website that I really liked was called lakefront living.com.  It only has legit houses that are actually lakefront - not lake view or river view or swamp view.   It allows you to search by state, region, town or lake name.  It also lists whether lakes allow power boats or not.   This coupled with a map of ski areas and google maps made the searching a bit faster.  

I'm not sure who found the listing and at this point it does not really matter but for some reason we kept going back to it and finally decided it warranted a visit.  It met the criteria set out in our wish list.

1. Waterfront - Yup looked to be about 30' from the water.
2. Close to a Ski Mountain - Yup - Sunapee 20 minutes and Okemo 40 minutes.
3. Under 2.5 hours from our house - Google maps has it at 2:20.
4. Year Round Cottage - Check -Roads maintained during winter.
5. Needs to feel like a cottage - Check -1940's camp renovated in 2010.
6. In our price range - Check- Is this too good to be true?
7. Snowmobile in the Garage - Not on the list, but Check.

We took a trip up in March and another visit once the snow all melted.  Spoke to a few neighbors about the lake and skiing and then decided to put an offer in on the house.  It has been a whirlwind ever since.