One Day at a Time

We're kind of in the stage of thinking about where we would like to live in the long run. Minnesota has treated us well, for the most part, but it's not a place we want to stay. Too many people, too much heat and humidity in the summers, too far from most of the family, lack of mountains--just a few reasons we can't stay here forever. In order to completely pay off the house, we're looking at around another 10 years, give or take.

One of the places we've been talking about moving to is the Black Hills. The climate around Rapid City is pretty close to ideal, there's definitely a lot of sunshine, and since the majority of our friends here in the Cities are from the Rapid area, we know that they'll be visiting and we'll have a chance to see them occasionally. A friend of Scott's mom has a property on the market up there, and her price was finally in the range that we could actually consider purchasing a second home, one that we could move to when we leave here, but use for vacation/family seeing/letting friends use when they visit, etc, until we can get out there. Over Memorial Day weekend, we took a whirlwind visit out to the place to actually see it.

Becka's father, a Rapid City architect, graciously gave us a little bit of his time to glance at the place. Unfortunately, he found enough things that could turn into major problems that we decided not to buy. But in the spirit of our trip, I did take several pictures, and I feel obligated to share.

This first picture is of the front (?) of the house. I'm standing at the gate of one of the corrals on the property and looking back at the house. Scott and Perry (Andy's father) are standing on the deck, one of the things that would need to be replaced.

This picture was taken from almost the same distance, but it gets the side of the house. The window in the back is for the master bedroom. The statue in the foreground is part of a small garden area with a little stone bench also in it.

Finally, this picture is from almost the exact same spot as the first picture, and looks out at the corral and the majority of the property, 3.41 acres total. The section roped off on the left is the leach field, and the lot even farther left has not yet been built on. The 3.41 acres apparently also encompasses the little stand of trees at the end of the leach field. To the right, and slightly out of the picture, is another house quite a ways back, in the foresty area at the far back of the picture.

I just found a missing roll of film that has pictures of the inside, so as soon as I get that developed, I'll post more house pictures.