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WHY WE WERE LOOKING, Sometime in 2004, one of my brothers and I were talking about our love of family, fishing, Lake of the Ozarks and what the future might hold as the next generation began to marry and beget. My brother and his wife already had a house on the Lake near Osage Beach. It is a beautiful lake house near Tan Tara, one of the popular resorts located on the lake, and some combination or another of the family had been to their house several times and loved it. The other brother and his wife had been looking for a house at the lake, and had even registered with a real estate agent who sent them regular reports on what was for sale, information on locations, and the usual list of attributes needed to get to know about a house. As we talked, my brother suggested that it would be really neat if the family members could get 3 or 4 houses in a row, that way we might be able to retire and live close to each other. In our nuclear family, no one has lived any closer than about 350 miles to the throughout most of our entire adult lives. We agreed that it would be pretty neat if that could happen, that it would be nice to have that sort of living arrangement at least once, and we left it at that. My wife and I continued to search for a lakefront home, and by then we had learned enough about the lake and its layout to know that we wanted to be inside the 30 mile marker on the main channel. We concentrated our search with the help of the real estate agent, only to have one after another house sell before we ever even got to see it. We spend every spring break (my wife is an elementary school teacher) at Lake of the Ozarks, and 2006 was no exception. In 2006 we made the twelve hour drive to the lake, arriving at dawn on Good Friday. We stayed at my brother and sister in law’s house near Osage Beach, and spent the day sleeping, fishing and eating. We had come to the conclusion that if we were ever going to find a home at the lake, we were going to have to go looking in person and be ready to pounce when the right opportunity presented itself. With that in mind, we spent all day Saturday exploring coves from Osage Beach to just north of Camdenton on Hwy 5. We saw lots of beautiful homes, but nothing that just reached out and grabbed us. The next day, Easter Sunday, we decided to strike out in the opposite direction. This time we went north on Hwy 54, north of Osage Beach, and took the drive across the toll bridge on MM, heading across the lake toward Sunrise Beach and Laurie. We came across a beautifully kept, very old, country cemetery. At the corner was a sign that said Shawnee Bend 3, and next to it was a Remax Real Estate “FOR SALE” sign pointing down the street. Our eldest daughter was with us, and she said “Let’s go look, we have never been down here.” So that is what we did. Spruce runs by the cemetery, then past the fire station. At the first Y Spruce goes to the right, and there was another Remax sign. We followed it to the 2nd road to the left, Chinquapin (a name we have never learned to pronounce), and there was a Remax sign pointing the way again. We turned on Chinquapin, followed it to the 2nd road again, and there, with the faithful Remax sign signaling the next turn, was Aspen Lane. We could see the final real estate sign pointing at a gravel driveway that wound out of sight. We got to the bottom of the hill, and got our first look at what would become Our Place. Does it look now as it looked then? Well, no. We have made a lot of changes, but it grabbed our hearts and our imaginations, and that was what we were looking for! We hope that it will grab your heart, too. We pray that your family will treasure its time spent there, and that Our Place will become Your Place. |