Summer Homes - however you care to define them

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In the thread about How many houses have you lived in, I noticed a number of people talked about summer homes. And I was immediately interested.

Tell us about them. Long term, short term, with relatives, whatever. Obviously there’s a difference between a summer home and a hotel room we stayed in once, but really I don’t want to be much more restrictive than that. (Mind you, if it was a hotel you went back to year after year, that’s different and interesting.)

I’ll start. We had a static (towing) caravan on a park by the seaside. Now, don’t get your hopes up (Part 1) – I’m obviously not in a position to measure it now, but I guess that van was 15 or 16 feet long and about 6 feet wide – two adults, two children. Don’t get your hopes up (Part 2) – the “park” was literally a field, on a farm, with three standing taps and a horrible brick toilet block, no hot water. (Towards the end of our time there, a better block with pay showers was built). Oh, and don’t get your hopes up (Part 3): it was, as the crow flies, less than 10 miles from home. A 12 mile drive, maybe. What’s even stranger is, that sort of distance wasn’t that unusual – I used to hang out there with a couple of kids from my home town. (Even stranger, we used to hang out with a (German) family that came over from Germany to England every summer, to their tiny caravan in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, so far north that you could see Scotland from the road leading into the farm. Thus:)

There was no electricity – lights and the cooker ran off bottled gas. There was a tiny wood burning stove that, in colder weather, we collected driftwood for. I don’t remember a grocery, but the village had a hotel, a riding school, a chippy, an antique store, and Twentyman’s (it’s still there!) where you could buy a shrimping net, a beachball, an icecream and so on. We spent our days living feral on the beach, because back then you could.

I guess we first went there when I was 6 or 7. And I remember listening to a strange and wonderful new song called Starman on the radio there, so we were still going when I was into my teens.

So that was how our summers rolled (and Easter, and….) for most of a decade. How about you?

j

2

I have lived in the Phoenix, AZ area for 40+ years, so I’ve “put in my dues.” After a particularly hot summer two years ago, I said “that’s it!” to my wife, and she agreed that we could look for a summer house someplace cooler.
After a lot of searching, we found an older (well, older for us), small place in the town of Durango, CO. Good location - close to the river trail, and shopping and coffee, and just big enough that we are not on top of each other. I spent the last summer on my knees, putting new flooring in and fixing up the kitchen. I’m not quite done, but should be able to finish it half way through this summer, so I can relax a bit. I love the area, and the neighbors are very nice. If it wasn’t so cold in the winter, I think I would move there year-round, but my wife hates the cold.

Imgur

3

Colorado is rich in rainbows! IDY? Family in Colorado have the Grand Mesa in their backyard :wink: and they’ll see dbl sometimes triple rainbows.

Nope to a second home, never did never will. Unless a tree house or a sand fort (dangerous!) counts as I did escape many an afternoon to hide out in one as a child.

4

My father, his brother and a couple of their friends bought a piece of lakefront property in Saskatchewan that used to have a small sawmill on it. They built a cabin there and that’s where we spent a lot of time each summer (my father was a teacher so he had lots of time off in the summer).

The cabin started off with no power or running water (outhouse, anyone?) but gradually got improved over the years (first with a composting toilet and then with a septic tank) and the other friends built their own fancier cabins. I have a lot of memories of having fun there with my cousins, but also being bored out of my mind sometimes (no TV, no computer, no town within walking/biking distance, etc.).

5

In Wisconsin and Minnesota it’s common for people to own a “cabin” as a summer home. Typically these folks live in an urban or suburban area and travel to their cabin on weekends and extended holidays during the summer by car about 1-5 hours away.
There’s also retired folks who are fortunate to have two residences they travel between by season. Typically going to a northern state in the summer to avoid the heat and back to a southern state to avoid the cold like beowulf. They call them snowbirds.

6

Mine also - so I guess the long summer holidays was one of the reasons we had the 'van. We would disappear off youth hosteling (often in Scotland) for a couple of weeks and then spend the rest of the summer by the seaside.

Just thinking about it now, I think the reason we gave the 'van up was that my parents wanted to tour France and beyond in the summer holidays (towing a caravan) and allowed me one year of high school French before setting off with me as official family translator/interpreter.

j

7

Same here- lifelong SE Michigan resident, and growing up, no one ever described having a ‘summer home’ it was always a ‘cabin up north’. A friend of mine’s family had a nice place outside of Grayling; it had heat and electricity so it was more full-fledged house than cabin, but ‘cabin’ was what it was always called.

8

When I was a kid in South Florida, my grandparents bought a two-room fishing shack on the St. John’s River in North Florida. Well, I guess the bathroom made it three rooms. We had the best summers roughing it there.
Later, they added three more rooms and moved in permanently. It’s now my mother’s house. It still looks like an old fish shack with a couple of odd rooms stuck on, but the real estate is valuable.

9

I came here to post this. In Wisconsin, at least, it’s common to hear people say “I’m going ‘up north,’” in reference to spending time at their cabins, as many of those cabins are in the northern, more forested, half of the state, whereas most of Wisconsin’s residents live in the southern half of the state.

My wife’s family lives here in the Chicago area, but used to own a cabin in Wisconsin, about an hour NW of Madison, so about a 3+ hour drive for us. As you note, we used the cabin on weekends, holidays, and sometimes for a full week in the summertime.

10

We have a permanent campsite 93 miles from our primary home in Ohio. From April to October, my husband spends all of his time there. He comes back home for about three days every other week when we have a standing chiropractor appointment. I go down there for three days every other weekend. He takes care of that place and I take care of this one.

I like to call it our summer home. It’s a 36 foot park model in a campground that is totally permanent with an annual rent payment. (No weekenders that pay per night.) It has all the comforts of home and we just got Starlink last year for streaming after we cancelled DirecTV.

11

I’m from Minnesota, and yes we have an “up North” home on a lake. We bought it when I was teaching full-time at a small community college, while my wife kept her job. I’d go to the lake house Sunday evening and back by Thursday, and we never really used the lake like our neighbors up there do. We’re both retired but rarely go up there, since my wife is even busier than before she retired. It’s a fully equipped house (furnace, well water, even cable TV/internet), so I’ll go up by myself at least once a month to check on it.

12

My grand parents used to have the summer house. They’d spend winters in New Jersey and summers at the old family farmhouse in Maine. My family would usually go up there for a week or so every summer. Swim in the pond, pick blueberries, all the standard stuff. It had no real plumbing, there was a pump by the kitchen sink, but it only brought in water from the well, which was not safe to drink. An outhouse that you had to navigate through the bats at night.

Now, my folks have built a second house on part of the property. It is fully modern with solar panels and plumbing etc.

Unfortunately, my uncle, who inherited the original house, failed to pay the taxes, so it is now out of the family for the first time since it was built in 1852.

13

My parents have had a “summer” house for most of my adult life. Their main residence is Las Cruces NM, which, well, is darn hot. And so they do like to spend a few months away, although far less so as they’ve grown older and more in need of medical help.

Previously, it was in the mountains near Cotopaxi, CO, which, well, isn’t much more than a wide spot in the road of a town. It was a “cabin” which as originally set up had no power (wired though), no running water (plumbed though) and propane range, oven and fridge. Heat came from a nice cast iron stove which one could cook on if one wished. It was one bedroom, and the living room through kitchen area were all together with two big sofas, one of which folded out into a bed. There was also one small indoor bathroom which was NOT hooked to anything at the time, so it was outhouse.

Later, they added a bank of solar panels and a largish reserve battery, so using lower power options they could use a laptop (dialup internet over the phone line!), a small tv, and some lighting, in addition to a medium generator for more intense use.

Later STILL, they capped the hand pump on the water well and upgrade the generator, after which the plumbing for the dedicated bathroom was complete. Still, other than running the pump or to periodically top off the batteries, they mostly got by on the solar.

About a decade ago they sold the place at a smallish profit: two to three close calls with fires, and my father’s reduction in blood O2 meant the altitude was no longer a good idea for him, so they got a summer home near Silver City NM, closer to home and doctors, and still not as hot as Cruces by about 10 degrees.

An aside about summer homes - altitude is a help of course. Cruces is just shy of 4k ft above sea level, so it’s less obscenely hot than some lower elevations in the Southern states, especially with the low humidity.

Silver city is close to 6k, the same as where I live in Colorado Springs, and is a low population density area, so less asphalt and concrete absorbing and returning heat to the air.

14

Mr. Wrekker has a Lake house. He spends most of his time there, sometimes decamping to the deer camp. During seasons.

It’s not real far from home but miles away from my comfort. So I’ve only been there a handful of times. Will not be spending nights there.

The man loves his fishing.
He’s on the Lake most days. Weather be damned.

15

We live near Chicago. My FIL had some property in SW Michigan (It’s like a mitten…) about 4 hrs away. 2 qtr sections - about 300 acres with 3 houses and a couple of private lakes on it. He inherited it from his grandfather (who traded a Cadillac for the original portion.) The old house, the red house built when my wife was a kid, and the new house. We went there several. times a year, summer and winter. It was pretty glorious.

Access got complicated when it became known that FIL was a bigamist w/ a second family. We still had access to the red house. But FIL died a couple of years ago, and willed the place to his other family, so we can no longer go. Too bad. Lots of great memories with the kids, dogs, and just the 2 of us.

One thing, in recent years, the place was nowhere near as isolated as it had been even 10-20 years ago. Just a lot more traffic, noise, gunfire, etc. Just detracted somewhat in our opinions. But no reason.everyone else oughtn’t want what we enjoyed.

We’ve thought of buying a 2d home, but if you have a 2d home, you ALWAYS have to go THERE. Also, it is enough work and effort to maintain the one home we live in. Finally, with so many properties available on VRBO etc, owning a 2d home (we would prefer not renting it out) is quite pricey.

16

I’m in MN

My grandpa built a cabin in the early 50s on a lake about an hour from our homes. He died young (58 a heart attack at the cabin). My dad took it over and we spent just about every summer weekend there plus my dad’s two weeks of vacation. We celebrated Memorial Day, Fourth of July & Labor Day there every year with family. Most of my childhood memories are of being at the cabin. When my sisters and I were married with our own kids, we’d spend many weekends there. My dad bought an old camper so there were enough beds to go around. Great memories. My dad also died young (54 - heart attack). Of course there was a big kerfluffel regarding the cabin and my dad’s brother. So my mom bought a cabin on a lake about an hour away in Wisconsin. She still has it and it is a great gathering place for all of us. I’ve never known life without a cabin.

17

Never had one growing up - but had friends who had them, and did spend a weekend in one of them.
A friend has one that is divided among cousins (I think they each get a summer month - the place is not winterized)
When my mon died, one of my sisters bought her house. It is in Sister Bay (Door County). The house is not on the water but is only a short walk from the Sister Bay beach and marina. There is another nice beach about 6 miles away (Sand Bay) and there are plenty of places to hike and such. My sister uses it as a vacation home - not just in the summer. I go there once or twice a year – usually my sister is there, but I also used it for a college friend gathering.

The pluses is you always have a place to go, the minuses are you really need to go there to make it worthwhile and you have twice the expenses and maintenance.
OK, maybe the vacation home uses less electricity and possibly heat but if not heated in winter you have to close and open it up.

Brian

18

Jeez! I hope you’re looking after your health.

19

My immediate family has never had a summer home or cabin or camper, but my best friends growing up had them in their families.

The one friend’s family had a place at DTJ Taborville, a Czech community in northeast Ohio. While I’ve never been to the actual cottage (it was already pretty rotten by the time we were in high school) I’ve been there for their community events such as Polka parties and parades. Since the Czechs are so in to gymnastics, it has a fabulous gymnasium. I think the heyday of the cottage was one generation above my friend (so, pre-1970s).

The other friend’s family had a cottage by Atwater Lake in Ohio. Their grandpa owned it. I think he was a college professor so he’d spend the summers down there and anyone who wanted to come hang out with grandpa could do so. All of the grandkids and great grandkids are obsessed with fishing now so I think they really ate up that “cottage life.”

My SIL’s family has a place in Traverse City, MI. Her family was a lot more posh than ours. They all do try to descend on the place at least once per summer. An aunt still maintains it but she has to drive from Boston to do so. It’s a trek even from Cleveland!

From what I have gleaned about being “summer-house adjacent” is that it is a constant struggle to maintain the place and there’s about as many memories of fighting about it (who’s gonna have access, who’s gonna pay the fees, who’s gonna open it up, who’s gonna replace the rotting bits) as there are memories of good times there.

20

This is very true - when my brother and I were young, the 'van kinda made sense, because we could just be left to amuse ourselves on the beach. But you grow out of that, and I guess the attraction fades - plus, as I said upthread, my parents got a bit more ambitious about vacations.

j