Well, the time is drawing near for us to leave Traverse City, or more accurately, Williamsburg/Acme. It's been a wonderful 6 1/2 years but lives change. Three daughters living far away and two with children. A loving mother aged 86 is doing fine now but we need to get closer and get her out of the Michigan cold for a few months.
I built/planted a pretty nice backyard with perennials that brought me a lot of joy but I cannot tend them properly with my little back issues. I still love to ride the Harley but losing 6 months of the year with Michigan weather coupled with the reality of not a lot of years left to be able to ride meant getting farther south for some time.
Rose and I both had pretty nice part-time jobs that gave us the opportunity to travel when we wanted. Rose's job at the Grand Traverse Resort paid crap but a two mile drive and the perks of using the pool with visiting family and our use of the health club facilities brought more value to the job. My job at Front Street Insurance let me keep contact with the public and I worked with genuinely nice people. Both of us were able to pretty much write our own schedules but we also filled in as necessary in appreciation of the good working conditions. We will miss our good neighbor and friend, Ring, but hope he and we may be able to visit.
We were lucky enough to be able to purchase a nice home in Lexington, SC in this down market. It is near the Masons and two grand-daughters and has a community pool that we can all use in warm weather. We'll be down there basically for 6-7 months of the year and I'll try to take advantage of better weather and some nice geographic location to get some riding in while I can still do it.
Our luck held out when we were able to get a purchase agreement on a little condo about 5 miles east of Brighton, MI. It is about 30 minutes from the Denjas and our other 6 grand-children and a bit over two hours from my mother. All better than a 4-5 hour drive that we have now...not to mention that the Denjas can't all come in one vehicle anymore. We hope to close and be in the condo in late September. Our plan is to spend about 5 months there.
It's been a long time since we had a posting due to all this happening so quickly. We planned on taking two years to sell the Traverse house but it took only 3 months. We did take a loss on the house but the market dictated our reality. The upside was that we purchased the other two places in the down market, too, and took advantage of that.
It will be a time before we can post again. We end our cable and internet tomorrow and will be without any service until we re-establish it in South Carolina after we make our UHaul trek. We promise to post some pictures in the future. There are a couple now to show the mess we have.
Anyway, we have a very positive outlook on the future. Yet we are so sad to leave this beautiful area and our comfortable home here. But the future looks bright and we have wonderful family to visit and travels in the future.
I built/planted a pretty nice backyard with perennials that brought me a lot of joy but I cannot tend them properly with my little back issues. I still love to ride the Harley but losing 6 months of the year with Michigan weather coupled with the reality of not a lot of years left to be able to ride meant getting farther south for some time.
Rose and I both had pretty nice part-time jobs that gave us the opportunity to travel when we wanted. Rose's job at the Grand Traverse Resort paid crap but a two mile drive and the perks of using the pool with visiting family and our use of the health club facilities brought more value to the job. My job at Front Street Insurance let me keep contact with the public and I worked with genuinely nice people. Both of us were able to pretty much write our own schedules but we also filled in as necessary in appreciation of the good working conditions. We will miss our good neighbor and friend, Ring, but hope he and we may be able to visit.
We were lucky enough to be able to purchase a nice home in Lexington, SC in this down market. It is near the Masons and two grand-daughters and has a community pool that we can all use in warm weather. We'll be down there basically for 6-7 months of the year and I'll try to take advantage of better weather and some nice geographic location to get some riding in while I can still do it.
Our luck held out when we were able to get a purchase agreement on a little condo about 5 miles east of Brighton, MI. It is about 30 minutes from the Denjas and our other 6 grand-children and a bit over two hours from my mother. All better than a 4-5 hour drive that we have now...not to mention that the Denjas can't all come in one vehicle anymore. We hope to close and be in the condo in late September. Our plan is to spend about 5 months there.
It's been a long time since we had a posting due to all this happening so quickly. We planned on taking two years to sell the Traverse house but it took only 3 months. We did take a loss on the house but the market dictated our reality. The upside was that we purchased the other two places in the down market, too, and took advantage of that.
It will be a time before we can post again. We end our cable and internet tomorrow and will be without any service until we re-establish it in South Carolina after we make our UHaul trek. We promise to post some pictures in the future. There are a couple now to show the mess we have.
Anyway, we have a very positive outlook on the future. Yet we are so sad to leave this beautiful area and our comfortable home here. But the future looks bright and we have wonderful family to visit and travels in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment