"Our First Look at the Interlochen, MI House"

After Don made the decision to retire, we got busy with the remodeling of our Madison house.  In preparation for listing it, as well as making things easier for the remodeling, we needed to pack up some of our possessions or "de-clutter" the house.  With that, came the need to put things in storage, which we decided to do in the Traverse City, MI area, rather than here in Madison.  In February, I drove a fully loaded 14' U-Haul truck to MI and put everything into a storage unit.  We planned for me to drive over a few days prior to Madison's annual kayak and canoe event, Canoecoppia.  My oldest son, Patrick, wanted to attend Canoecoppia this year, so we timed moving things into storage so I could ride back to Madison with him (plus, the BIG bonus was he helped me unload the truck!).  It worked out quite well, although the day of packing the truck was one of the worst days of snow accumulation in Madison we'd had all Winter.

The Interlochen house was not being lived in at the time when we looked at it, which meant the private road and driveway had not had snow removed for us to drive back to the house.  We had to hike back to see the property, which we obviously loved when we saw it.  :)

Here are several photos of that day.........

The same view of the back garden area taken from near the side door.  We had no idea what was under all of the snow.  By the way, we found out last week that the bush on the left turns out to be a pussy willow.  We found another one near the garage, too.

This was the first time we knew that another out building, besides the garage, existed on the property.  As you can see, the same custom siding was added to the "warm weather yoga studio", too.  :)

This is the view from the "yoga studio".......

I took this photo from the front door of the house.  The snow/ice had slid down the metal roof and would eventually slide off and create a huge pile.  No more "roof raking" for us!  :)

A view of the garage/office/workshop from the porch.  The half moon window in the upper part of the garage softly illuminates the loft storage area.

Here is another view of the garage from the house loft's window.

A view from the house loft's window that faces the back.......

So.......even though we couldn't see "everything" due to the thick layer of snow, we fell in love with the place and placed an offer on it that day.........and the rest is history.  ;)