The decision to purchase a summer cabin in the mountains was driven by a need to be able to be in the outdoors year round.
For our 10th anniversary, we celebrated by renting an Airbnb on the Mogollon Rim (in Strawberry, about 3 miles from our cabin). We talked about what had made our marriage work so well for the past 10 years and how we could continue keeping it that way for the next 10 years.
We acknowledged that the decision to move to Mesa was a really good one. We no longer could take our five-six month road trips, as age had caught up to us, and the roughness of that life was no longer possible for our aging bodies. In Mesa we could be outdoors, doing the outdoor activities we loved doing together, year round. We could still camp, but camping for a week is a completely different matter from camping for five months.
It worked. But to make it work we had to make some serious accommodations. For much of the year "being outside" meant being outside in the middle of the night. From April through September it is too hot to be out in the sun. So we walked, swam, and cycled in the middle of the night. Very enjoyable. Peaceful. We are like the only people on the planet for those few hours.
But the rest of the day was starting to be a bit oppressive--just sitting inside. You can't even sit outside in the shade during the late spring, summers, and much of the fall in Mesa.
So we realized that if we took some of our money that was just "sitting there" and bought a summer cabin on the Rim that it would open up many opportunities for hiking during the summer. The temperatures are about 25 degrees cooler than they are in Mesa.
Twenty-five degrees is enough cooler that we can be outside hiking in the morning and sitting in the shade in the afternoon. We would not be stuck inside.
So we did it.
Our plan was to spend some time at the cabin, but most of the time live in Mesa.
The next decision we made was to purchase two Rad Rover electric assist fat tire bikes.
Our plan is to mostly use them at the cabin. There are hundreds of miles of roads on the Rim that just call out to us to cycle on them.
Here they are, yesterday, taking a little break after being cycled upon for an hour. On our two-hour trip in the mountains yesterday we saw only one car. That's the way it usually is.
Riding these bikes on hilly, rocky mountain roads is almost a completely new activity for us. There is some transfer from cycling on our road bikes, but this is different in significant ways. One is that it is challenging to find paths to ride on. On these roads we have to avoid gravel, as the bikes slip a lot. And you have to always hold on to the handlebars very tightly because if the front or rear tire hits a rock then it will shoot the bike sideways. Falling is always a possibility, so you have to have a lot of focus on the road--total focus. There is no "coasting" and, as I found out after taking a fall, there is no waving "hi" to people we pass.
Even though an electric assist bike can be used with very little leg muscle, we don't find that to be true on mountain roads. We pedal whenever we can instead of relying on the electric motor. It is the exercise we want, but also pedaling makes it easier to keep the bikes upright and in control. Downhills aren't the most fun part, like they can be on road bikes. Most of the downhills you have to hold on very tight and brake. There is no such thing as "speed."
It's like we have discovered a new hobby.
So now we have two major activities we can do from our cabin--cycle and hike.
We also made sure we could continue with two other hobbies--our indoor ones. The first one is essential--if there had not been space for it we would not have bought the cabin. That is dancing. The other is ping pong.
As of writing this blog entry, we have already spent 50 nights at the cabin.
What we have done is to have shifted our thinking from this cabin being something we would occasionally use to a place where we will live a substantial part of the year. We are now looking at basically splitting time between the two places. That will give us the variety we need in our outdoor activities.
Making that shift has meant that we are stocking the cabin differently. Instead of hauling a lot of things we use back and forth between the two homes, we have now stocked the cabin as well as our Leisure World home with everything we need.
BUT there was one thing missing. The cabin did not have a laundry room. Not enough space in this small cabin. So this would have meant hauling clothes from one home to another. And with our outdoor activities, we get clothes dirty frequently.
This is an example of the old saying that what bothers you initially will end up driving you crazy. Not having the ability to do laundry at the cabin would seriously affect our enjoyment of it because it would create a lot of unnecessary work and because we could not stay at the cabin for an extended period of time.
So, undaunted, we are having a laundry room built in our outdoor shed.
We each have our own family "jobs. " We didn't plan it that way, but it just sort of easily happened, like everything happens easily with us. Vicky does the laundry. She asked that I put into this blog entry that building a laundry room was my idea to help her enjoy the cabin more by making it unnecessary to haul a large accumulation of dirty clothes to Leisure World and clean ones back again. This just makes this part of life easier and more fun.
(Vicky here. I feel that our “laundry room” is a gift that Dan has given to me.)
A couple of days ago the washer/dryer was delivered.
Look at Vicky caressing it. I'm afraid she's going to take one of the lawn chairs, set it up in the shed, and spend hours staring at it lovingly.
The plumber comes today to start running water to it and running drains to the septic. The electrician comes next week. Then the contractor will have some other work to get it ready to use.
Now we can be outside all day like we have been able to be outside all day, every day, for the past 10 1/2 years. Half of the year in Mesa and half in the cabin.
In less than two hours we can hop from one place to the other, on a drive that is really quite beautiful that rivals any scenic drive in the country.
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