Pinetop - Here We Come!

For the past couple of years the youth of our ward have gone to Pinetop in the winter to play in the snow. We have several ward members who have cabins there and have hosted the outings. Dan and Bryce have been on a few of these trips and it planted a seed in our minds of how fun it would be to have a cabin we could use on a year round basis.

For all of Michelle's life, she has gone to Mt. Graham to the Alder family cabin in Columbine. But because of the high altitude (9300 ft) the forest service closes the roads in the winter, so the cabin is only accessible May through October (and sometimes less than that due to snow or fires). Also sharing the cabin with many relatives generally makes it challenging to match up vacation days to days the cabin is available.

We started looking at cabins online last summer, but the prices were still relatively high, and we decided the time wasn't right. In January, we got the bug again and tried to go up for a scouting trip, but a hard winter storm canceled our trip. Finally in February we made it up and met with a realtor, Neal Thompson. We felt like we were on the HGTV show "House Hunters". We looked at 7 cabins, narrowed it down to the top 3 and bid on our favorite.

The sellers weren't interested in negotiating the price, so we moved on to favorite #2. After 3 bids and counteroffers we reached a price and went into escrow. Sadly the inspection revealed mold in the crawlspace. After much research and thought, we pulled out of the deal.

At the beginning of spring break we went back up to Pinetop for a little play time in the snow and to look at some more cabins. We saw 4 more houses and fell in love with one. It was everything we wanted and more. After talking to the seller's realtor, Neal suggested we ask for the furnishings too. We did, and they accepted. So after a month of paperwork, we are now the excited owners of a cabin in Pinetop.

In April we went up for the day to see what we bought! We are looking forward to spending some time in the cool pines this summer.

We will be going up soon to "move in" which really only means taking our clothes and a few odds and ends since the sellers left everything including furniture, linens, dishes and even puzzles in the cupboard. All we need to do is fence is an area for Luna to run, and figure out how to make a zip line off the balcony (any ideas?) Adam already has a tree picked out for a swing.

No longer will we curse the hot summer - we will just head to Pinetop!