#105 Finding Peace in Familiar Views

Yep, you know, one of the things being podcasters is we make relationships with these people that are listening. They feel like they know us and, as people share things with us online, we can feel like we get to know them, and part of that is experiencing real life together. Yep, and some of you have been asking where are you? Where are you? Well, we've been doing real life. We both have a lot of kids, families, we both own small businesses, so lots of things go into that. So this is real life and we're constantly talking to each other, eric and I, about what we can do to keep the podcast going. So one of the things we've decided to do is air episodes rather than weekly which is making it hard to be consistent is do bi-weekly.

Speaker 2: 1:19

Yep. So the thing with podcasting and consistency and what we've seen just based on our lives and what goes on and holiday structures that come up and when our kids are off of school and the time we need to spend at our businesses or traveling is the just ability to put out a bunch of podcasts in a row which we'll put like three or four weekly. They stack up and it's nice and we feel like we're getting momentum. And then life happens and really podcasting the recording isn't the tough part, it's the editing, making sure it's polished and clean and organized. Getting it uploaded is just a little bit of a challenge to be consistent on that.

Speaker 2: 1:53

So we want to make sure you guys can look forward to things and know that they are going to continue to grow and we feel like if we can switch to biweekly structure it that way, it actually kind of matches we were talking about this before. It matches up really nice with like cabin lifestyle and living. Most people don't go up to their getaways or they don't go on vacations or go on a weekly basis it's like every other week during the summer, or they'll go up for a couple of weeks in a row and then be gone for a couple of weeks, so we're hoping that the consistency of that will allow everyone to still get plenty of fresh content that'll line up great with their their travels to their favorite getaways for sure, and one of the things you guys can do too.

Speaker 1: 2:33

I mean you might be sitting there saying oh I wish I could, you know, help out in some way. We're not going to ask you to come babysit the kids. We're not going to ask you to come put in hours in our shops, that's kind of a good idea. Your er's changing his mind.

Speaker 3: 2:46

Maybe he'll ask for that.

Speaker 1: 2:47

But you can share the podcast, share it in your social media, share it as you chat with friends, show them how to listen to a podcast. I mean, I have people come in the shop and friends I know who've never listened to a podcast before and they're so excited to learn how to get the app and start listening. So as much as you can share us and it continues to grow the more we'll be able to bring you more content.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Yeah, and speaking of content, we talked about the log cabin restaurant, a couple of podcasts ago and we got a really great listener email.

Speaker 2: 3:21

This is from Andrea Anderson, a longtime listener. In the area I live in there are several log restaurants to visit. Rutgers Bay Lake lodge has the original log dining room Still. There is also the lonesome pine on Bay Lake. They are known for their awesome pizza, but all their food is wonderful. Those are in Dearborn, minnesota. Then if you travel North past Duluth on highway 61, you should stop at the rustic. It sits across from Lake Superior and has amazing pie. Also wanted to touch on setups. When I was a lot younger there were many bars and restaurants in the Brainerd Lakes area that had setup service. The way I remember is that you could leave your bottle or bring it with you. The place would write your name on the bottle. You would pay for the mix and the ice. I think they did this because it was hard to get a liquor license and their insurance would go up in price. I don't see this at all any longer. Thanks for the great podcast. I've been enjoying it since the beginning. So thank you so much, andrea.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Yeah, I love getting that feedback. Number one I want to make sure the rustic north of Duluth is going on my list.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Yes.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And have you ever seen that? Where you take your bottle in and put your?

Speaker 2: 4:30

name on it, just like stay there. No, no, not where you put your name on it. I actually I I love the visual of like a lineup of bottles with people's names on them right running across uh-huh I do too, and I just imagine the conversations where you're like oh, my buddy's not here, he'd let me get, hey can I right, I'm out can I get a pull from your bottle and they're like no right that's. That's a super fun, just visual it is an idea.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Yeah, like a like the cheers. Well, the bartender knows everybody so well he probably wouldn't know who to let have a sip of somebody else.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Yeah and actually you kind of I love that idea, even for your house is like your buddies come over, they bring a bottle of bourbon as a gift and then you break into it and then it'd be fun to just put a piece of duct tape on it with their names and save it for the next time they're over and be like hey, don't bring another one. We still got half to finish instead of polishing off your own.

Speaker 1: 5:20

We do have way too much at our house because of those things, because you do have a friend that only has this drink, or only one of your friends drinks Southern Comfort, so it sits there for years.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yes.

Speaker 1: 5:32

And then I get a little itchy to like we don't need all this stuff. And that's when that person would come back.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Yeah, They'd be like, wait a minute. Hey, three years ago I brought you a bottle and who drank my SoCo.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Oh my gosh, do you have a friend who has the most original drink when they come to your house?

Speaker 2: 5:56

No, my, my father-in-law drinks Canadian club and diet Coke and you know, and if we don't have that he'll drink just the regular bourbon. But we don't. I don't drink a lot of CC, that's about. And then we get have the like I think we talked about this a long time ago on the episode but like when someone gives you just a jar of moonshine that their uncle's brother's cousins made and they're just like or apple pie.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Are you afraid of it?

Speaker 2: 6:15

Yeah it's, it's hard Cause it's not like hey, I made this. You're like, okay, I know you, I trust you, I'm sure you did it the right way, and I know that moon, like, if you're putting Everclear in and making the apple pie like there's not a lot that can go wrong, but it's like this murky liquid and they're not.

Speaker 1: 6:33

What kind of friends do you have?

Speaker 2: 6:37

They're all showing up with murky moonshine. These are the people that okay Like. One of them was someone who, like, wanted to use and we've talked about this too is like we have one of the only low spots in the lake that you can launch a boat, so people always bring boats over and then, as a thank you which I don't ask them to they sometimes will drop off a bottle stuff, and one of them was this jar of moonshine that's still sitting at my house, but it's not like they want to drink it with you. They're not like oh hey, here's this open thing and they take a sip. And boy is this good, good. They're always like, hey.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Passing it around, yeah it's like, probably been.

Speaker 2: 7:08

I mean, you don't know, there's no date on it, there's no label.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Well, you could use it for a cleaning product. If you don't drink it, I guess, right, yeah that's what it feels like.

Speaker 2: 7:16

It's just it would be more of a cleaning product. But either way, I do love the idea of setup service. I've never even heard that. I've heard of bottle service, but I like the idea of setup service.

Speaker 1: 7:28

I know, that sounds really cool.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Super great email, so keep them coming guys.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Fun tradition. So I have an article. So there's things that kind of go through trends and maybe especially even since COVID, living in a van or traveling around the country with your whole family Van life, they call it.

Speaker 2: 7:53

It's like a thing. It's like an Instagram life. And there's been some major influencers that have built huge followings by living the van life.

Speaker 1: 8:03

And are you old enough to remember Chris Farley that van down by the river?

Speaker 2: 8:08

Oh yeah, that's all I can think of when people say van life Living in a van down by the river. Well yeah, the coach, the life coach one.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Would you go? Yeah, the life coach one. Would you live in a van?

Speaker 2: 8:20

I would travel, I would go on an extended trip and do the van life thing, not as like sell my house and live in a van. I think it'd be fun, but it's like a great thing for your if you can do it in your 20s, especially with the remote living I think, like covid probably helped kick start a lot of that where it's like, okay, if I'm going to be remote, anyway you, and now with starlink you can get really high quality internet by just parking in an open area and traveling, like there's ways to set up your van to get everything. I think some of my favorite van life posts on Instagram are the ones where, like this is what I have to do to go to the bathroom. This is where you can park, where they won't break into your van.

Speaker 1: 9:04

Like the behind the scenes of the pretty squares. Yeah, single woman traveling by herself.

Speaker 2: 9:07

It's not like the behind the scenes, yeah. And if it's like pretty squares, yeah. Single woman traveling by herself, it's not like the safest life. But when couples go together, besides that, one guy and his girlfriend, remember that that we're doing the van life thing and it turned the national yeah so there's some just safety challenges there, for sure well, we've talked about before.

Speaker 1: 9:24

I think we both read green lights by matthew mcconaughey when he and his dog go on their excursions and he puts a hole in the bottom of the car so he can keep going.

Speaker 2: 9:35

And the van.

Speaker 1: 9:36

So I mean there's some. I think it's kind of like when you think of Thoreau or any of those like get back to nature, go live in a little cabin by yourself in the woods. Van life is that same same. You know that wanderlust inside people, and they think it sounds glorious, and then some of them find out it's just what they wanted, and some find out that it's not what they wanted. So the interesting thing about this article, though, is this is the betty diaries, and it's from parkrecordcom. This just came out, in March of 2024. Van life is so over, so this is an opinion, so we'll have to see what we think.

Speaker 1: 10:20

A sleeping bag in the back of a truck is fine for a weekend camping trip, my friend Stacy says, but I am not dating anyone who actually lives there. Time was, living out of a van was a chick magnet. At first it was like, oh, you're well off enough to drop everything and tool around the country in a sprinter. That's kind of rad, she says. But then I had a bumble match who asked me to meet him for coffee at Lucky Ones. He said he lived. Let's just remember this is not me talking.

Speaker 2: 10:50

This is the article I'm going to just clip this and just play it as like a promo for the podcast. I had a Bumble Match.

Speaker 1: 10:57

He said he lived right in town and I thought perfect, he's Park City, enough to know the coolest coffee shop in town. Then I get there and I realize he only knows about Lucky Ones because he's actually living out of his van in the library parking lot.

Speaker 1: 11:12

Insert rolling eyes emoji In the pandemic. Living in a van was kind of like wearing a full body mask. Covid surge, yeah, smoot smurge. Hashtag. Van life was social distancing on steroids. It meant you could get away from people faster than you could unbox a SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test kit. Forget being emotionally unavailable, physical unavailability was the new normal. Live, love, laugh, but make it solo.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Flash forward to today, as my friend says, the whole ski bum. Living out of your van thing is like hey, peter Pan, you're 50, get a life. So maybe it's not surprising that a new kind of American dream is all about cabin life. You know that little 1970s piney A-frame in the middle of the woods where you can ski tour out your front door, roll your mountain bike out the back door, grab your fly fishing rod and head out because a river literally runs through it. Hang out to do puzzles and drink hot toddies and tell stories. Life is simpler when you have to cart in your tortilla chips and salsa, queen dogs and Johnny's IPA on the back of a ski-do. And in this post-zombie apocalypse world it's more about creating closeness than distance. Buying a cabin is like van life for people who've outgrown van life, says my cousin Melissa who, together with her husband Adam, recently found their dream cabin on a road off a road, off another road in Oakley. She says they'll never get up their van, a vintage camper named Large Marge.

Speaker 2: 12:45

That's a great camper name.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Right, but it's always been a dream to have an actual place to create memories with family and friends. In that way, cabin life is not so much about getting away as it is about getting in, gathering in. I totally get it. My brother dated a woman in Maine whose family owned a very small island three miles off the coast of Spruce Head. To me it was like someone broke off a chunk of the Adirondacks and stuck it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean All pine trees and rugged rocks and butterflies and wild meadows. This was no billionaire's quiet luxury. In fact, it would be impossible to recreate this kind of authenticity, regardless of how much money you had.

Speaker 1: 13:25

Lori came from a long line of mid-coast lobstermen, don Tuffin, wicked Smot. Her grandfather built the first cabin on the island in 1930 as a bait shack and it stands to this day as strong and weathered as the hands that built it. I loved going to that bait shack cabin on the island with Lori and my brother. The trip over was wild, unpredictable and often a pain in the. Everything had to be carried in Water, food, clothing, booze. The weather had to be just right to motor through the channel, dodging hundreds of lobster traps along the way. There were no docks on the island. You moored your boat in a small cove. From there you'd row a tiny boat to shore and lug all the provisions from the beach across a wide sweet grass meadow to the tiny cabin. The cabin itself was called Treasure Box, because that's exactly what it was One room filled with beach glass and crocheted lace and driftwood and generations of memories. Heat was supplied courtesy of the ancient Franklin stove Lori's grandfather originally installed. If you had to pee in the middle of the night, you could tiptoe to the outhouse in the moonlight. At least they had delivery, but it was definitely not DoorDash. If you were lucky, lori's cousin, a curmudgeonly lobsterman named Skip, would drop off a few squirming shutters from the day's haul. You just had to muck through the squishy seagrasses to grab the bucket he handed off the back of his cape islander.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I was thinking about Treasure Box when I visited Melissa and Adam's cabin for the first time the other day. The road is closed in winter, so we motored in on their snowmobile. After lunch, melissa wanted to take me on a sled tour of the neighborhood. We looped through the woods, up and down snow-covered trails and hurtling over endless whoop-de-doos that made me think I was going to hurl the engine overheated, some kids in an ATV stopped and told us to throw snow underneath. That's when Melissa realized she wasn't sure how to get back to the cabin. We had no cell service and no GPS Technically we were lost, but we weren't too worried. Service and no gps technically we were lost, but we weren't too worried. It was a classic cabin memory in the making, exactly what we'd been searching for all along.

Speaker 2: 15:32

Oh, that's great I love this whole story yeah, and so the author too was is kate sonic, so we'll link to this in the show notes, because it's just such a wonderful article oh, the way it's written.

Speaker 1: 16:40

And then just the little, the little tidbits of things like the name of the cabin in Maine and how she described getting there and then what happened there. I love the treasure box.

Speaker 2: 16:50

Yeah, she's a beautiful writer.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Yeah and oh my gosh. So yeah, the van is not a chick magnet anymore, eric.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Yeah, yeah, I think there's a vision and adventure of how it's going to be, but then reality sets in, like a lot of other things. I think like the next step up from that right is the tiny house movement that has more, a little more like roots and things. You can have a bathroom in there, as small as it might be, and kind of live that. And people are also getting creative because of the housing market situation, with the people locked in with low interest rates and the it being challenging for like new homes getting on the market, like there's not enough builders and not enough inventory, so I get van life. I love the idea of it. I think it's a beautiful adventure. If you spend a year doing it, it's awesome, but if it's like your entire lifestyle, I think it's definitely a little challenging to get women at least right, yeah, yeah, I think I've.

Speaker 1: 17:42

I've always had a dream of I'll fly. Yeah, you get there, whatever, but I would rather drive and john madden the football announcer yeah he had his madden cruiser because he did not fly yeah and I'm always, I've always wanted a madden cruiser, like, just give, I don't need, don't need a chef, I don't need a trainer, I don't.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I'll take a driver for my, my, my van and take me all the places I want to go, and then I can sit and work in the back and read in the back and do all the things. I mean. I think that could be super fun and I actually saw a I don't know if it was a real or a tick tock yesterday. You know the beautiful trains that go across Europe and where they have the white linens to eat while you're having, you can dine on the car and I'm like, oh, I can make my Madden cruiser so pretty, like have China in it and all kinds of things. So it's fun to dream about, like you said, but the reality of it, yeah, one, one year to take the kids out of school and go travel the country.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Oh you have to bring kids with. Well, now I probably couldn't, but that would be a fun dream, like if you could go back and do it.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Oh yeah, this that's what I pause.

Speaker 2: 18:57

Right, we kind of dealt with that with. Like disney is like you you're trying to find when you have three kids and our kids are close in age, the age where they're all in a perfect thing for certain things just varies. So you'd like the oldest is a little too old for and then the youngest is a little too young. The middle one's like, yeah, right there, but if you so just staggering things interesting, but traveling and van life would work pretty good for a short window of time it it feels like it'd work really good until your kids like gets moody and teenager and you deal with that and then you just have to.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Or if they're too young and they're just screaming the whole time cause they don't like being in a car seat, so you got to like, get kids that are just in that prime precociousness where they just want the adventure Right.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Well, I'd love to hear if any of our listeners have ever lived a van life or kind of done the tiny house adventure. I'd love to hear some of their stories. That'd be super cool.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Yeah, okay, there's a website that we found too. That is wisconsinlifeorg, which has got some really great articles, and one that caught my eye is in the science and nature portion and it's from last year, september 14th, by Ron Weber and Sarah Hope. Hopefully my portrait is priceless the view from the Wisconsin cabin. Many of us have that special spot in our homes where we feel at peace. Maybe it's when you park it on the couch and sit down at the sewing table or immerse yourself in the food pantry. For writer Ron Weber, it's when he's standing in front of a window in his cabin. That's an interesting lead-in.

Speaker 1: 20:33

Immerse yourself in the food pantry, In your food pantry. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 20:36

I don't know.

Speaker 2: 20:39

It is a view not unlike thousands of others from waterfront homes or cabins in Wisconsin. This particular view, however, is special only in that it has been my view from the kitchen window of our cabin on the shores of Lake Nacoggan, near Cable, since I was nine years old. As I look out the window to the south, the eyes come to rest on a spruce-laden island with a lone towering white pine on its northern tip. On a spruce-laden island with a lone towering white pine on its northern tip, this pine is a beacon for boaters traversing this part of the lake, like a lighthouse, guiding them to the narrows which lead to another basin of the lake. In the center of my view is the dock, a rustic wood dock resting on a trim aluminum frame complete with a couple old tires at the end to act as cushions when a boat is tied up there. It is the only dock I have known, though most other cabin owners in the lake have gone to more gaudy and modern looking docks.

Speaker 2: 21:26

I have no intention of replacing ours. On the things that I always rely on, the wisdom behind the old axiom If it ain't broke, don't fix it. To the West lies an expanse of shoreline lined with hemlocks and white pines, as well as a nice mix of hardwoodss. This shoreline is actually part of a large island, having circumnavigated around it countless times on my boat, though from my vantage point of the kitchen window I cannot tell. Most of the spring and summer it just looks green, but when mother nature gets in the mood to paint, come late september it is transformed into a beautiful tapestry of crimson, yellow, orange and, of course, the green of the hemlock and pine. Though the beauty is short-lived, it is worth the wait and, to be honest, I am happy it exists for only a brief time, making it more special. I have been blessed with so much that has come to me through this five-foot-by-five-foot pane of glass glorious sunsets, too numerous to count, no two ever. Quite the same, the excitement and trepidation of watching summer thunderstorms roll in across the lake, all the ducks that have appeared, first as pairs and eventually broods of little puffs of down, following their mother in tow. The eagles which perch in the tall white pines on our shoreline every once in a while, swooping down to catch a fish or unsuspecting duck. Then there was the time an odd identified object moving across the lake towards our beach materialized into a black bear which, upon emerging, shook himself off and ambled down the shoreline.

Speaker 2: 22:45

Through all the changes in my life, all the changes and triumphs, up and downs, good times and bads, this view has remained unchanged. It changes only with the seasons or time of day, but neither the decade nor development have been able to blemish it. We all have the important people and places in our lives which serve as our rocks. This is one, one of the most important waypoints, a place to where I can return to reset my compass, to let me know where I am, remind me of where I have been and help me get bearing to where I'm heading. The only real painting I have is done on houses and sheds, but in my mind's eye I have painted this portrait of my view a thousand times. Original Rembrandts may be worth a fortune, but to me my portrait is priceless.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Like the portrait. What is it? A portrait out my window.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Yeah, it's a. My portrait is priceless. The view from the Wisconsin cabin.

Speaker 1: 23:34

Yeah, so I mean just thinking about all the things, like they said that you see out your window. That's a fun thing to think about.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Like it's watching the seasons change, watching nature. That's just, that's beautiful. That would be a great thing to have everybody kind of pull out a pen and paper this summer and sit there in front of your window and think about what you see.

Speaker 2: 23:56

That's beautiful we have some music to share with you guys as well. Um, we've been kind of collecting over the last couple months and it's always fun when, uh, there's just new recommendations that pop up and we're able to share them with you, and this one really clicked and connected with us. So this is from a band called Lost Dog Street Band. After Dark Country Trio, lost Dog Street Band released its 2022 album. Glory band leader Benjamin Todd decided it was time to retire the project. Todd, along with his wife, ashley May, had been working together as a band since 2011.

Speaker 2: 24:31

I came to terms with letting go of Lost Dog completely, which is how I evaluate a lot of things in general. Oftentimes, when I'm trying to make a really hard decision, I go ahead and go through the process of mourning its death and accepting that I'm going to lose it. But just a month after recording a solo project, todd felt the urge to revisit the project one more time. To revisit the project one more time. So this project of Lost Dog Street Band is a brand new album called Survived, which I think is kind of apropos when they're talking about it, and this is the first track on that, called Brighter Shade guitar solo.

Speaker 3: 25:39

Each day I love you more and every time I seem to open up the door. I think I could be someone you adore, or at least better than I used to be, and with that thing will change. I could breeze on every foolish April day, I couldn't leave, but some part of me would stay and it would drive you mad eventually, and only I can love you like I do. Have you dared to trade it all for air bright as shade and blue? Take my hand and close your eyes.

Speaker 1: 26:38

I'd love to watch them live. Yeah there's a great vibe and energy. Yeah, and the musicality. I mean I love hearing the different instruments and that was a great one.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Yeah, well, thank you everybody, everybody for joining along with us this week and we look forward to getting some more stuff out to you guys, like we talked about in the beginning yeah, we'll have an episode coming up soon about traveling with pets um, kind of a whole pet theme.

Speaker 1: 27:05

So traveling with pets getting your home rental. So traveling with pets getting your home rental, whether you allow pets, don't allow pets tips for that. And then also just welcoming your guest pets Maybe you have a brother that always wants to bring their little dog and how you handle that. So if you guys have tips for anything with traveling with pets, send them in to us so we can share them in that episode.

The Cabincast

#105 Finding Peace in Familiar Views

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