Halcyon House - 5 BR / 3 BA House - Traverse City, Michigan

Our lives have been blessed with more opportunities and adventures than we could have imagined during our early years growing up in our separate small Upstate New York towns. We met in college and have been together 40 years through several moves, two children and a number of pets. Tony was a chemist and Christina - a first generation Polish American - is a doctor, and it's that combination that led us on the path to becoming VRBO hosts.

The U.S. Air Force paid for Christina's medical school during which Tony was a product manager for a Fortune 500 chemical company. After residency, Christina was assigned to Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, AK, to serve her 4 years active duty, and our family of four moved northwest.

As an active-duty officer, Christina had to be prepared to deploy with an hour's notice, and as we had pre-school age children, Tony had to be close by at all times. The only chemist jobs in Alaska at that time required leaving home for either 2 weeks at a time (oil industry) or 3 weeks (military hazardous waste cleanup) so Tony became a stay-at-home dad instead.

Tony was also casting about for other things to do and landed on home improvements. While he worked on dairy farms as a teenager - putting up hay in August is the worst job ever! - he had to teach himself how to work on houses. First up was a large elongated octagonal deck which is still standing in Alaska.

That led to other decks, patios, hot tubs, fences and finished basements until we decided to buy our future retirement house in the Traverse City area and name it Halcyon House. To say it "had potential" was an understatement. It had a non-working 16'X8' hot tub inside the house, a jewelry making studio, plus some rather odd electrical wiring decisions.

So now Christina is approaching retirement, and we were considering selling Halcyon House, but we enjoy being VRBO hosts, so we'll keep going a little longer.

1. Location - Six miles to downtown Traverse City, across the street from Taylor Park (public beach, charcoal grills, picnic tables, dock), 1/2-mile from Gilbert Park (boat launch with pull-through trailer parking), right next door to Long Lake Grocery, and 10 miles to Interlochen Center for the Arts. Long Lake is a 2,860-acre all-sports lake.

2. Price - Almost all the advantages of a lakefront rental for off-lakefront prices.

3. Size - Five bedrooms, three baths & over 3,000 square feet with a large kitchen and plenty of amenities.