We bought our lake house 10 years ago. I had grown up on a tiny lake in central Wisconsin called Lake Burnita. My husband is from Chicago and spent his summers and weekends on Lake Shangri-La in southern Wisconsin. We both had lake life in common and set out to find something within our budget and within 90 miles from our home in Milwaukee.
We wanted to give our children what we had grown up with. Those wonderful lake life moments. Reeling in huge bass from a canoe, cannonballs off the dock, King of the Tube…that ‘not so rushed’ feeling that comes with lake life. Lake Winnebago became our target area. Thirty miles long, ten miles wide gave us a lot of options for houses and recreational activities. We set about searching for a happy place for our 3 kids and a home for our Yamaha Waverunner.
We looked in Oshkosh and the western shore of Lake Winnebago. We didn’t know exactly what we were looking for at that time. We decided that the western shore wasn’t for us, too congested with houses and people. We arrived to the eastern shore and found the perfect cottage whose interior was gorgeous, needed a little work, but most importantly…had enough shoreline to make our lake life possible. It even had a neighborhood teenager who installed piers, docks and lifts and mowed the grass. Ambitious, hard-working teenagers are always a fortunate discovery.
We signed the paperwork and became lakefront homeowners. Little did we know the logistics that come with owning a lakefront home. Our first step, finding a dock…