y

. perty?”’

“WHY DON’T YOU
do an article on buying
a piece of vacation pro-
I was asked.
The reader went on to

_tell me that they were

considering buying a
piece of land on a lake
with a cabin but she had
some doubts about it.
My experience with

‘“cabins on a lake’’ has been
fortunately brief. The first

time we tried it, we rented a _

vacation home from some
friends and packed-up three
kids, the dog and a carload of
assorted. gear. The trip in-
volved taking the ferry to
Nanaimo and then driving to
Shawnigan Lake. Sounds
easy, doesn’t it? You ought
to try it with three kids aged
four, eighteen months and
three months! In July. On the
hottest day of the year. The
day there was a three-hour
wait for the boat.

No sooner had we arrived
at the cabin but the weather
changed. Nine days later it
still hadn’t stopped raining.
We depended upon a cranky

old wood stove for hot food

-and heating the cabin - occa-
sionally. It took several days
before we got the hang of the
thing during which time we
alternately roasted and froze.
Our toddler found out the
hard way that stoves cook
fingers as well as hamburgers
and the four year old demon-
strated that plastic dishes ‘‘go
funny’’ when placed on top.

Brian found a buddy in the
next cabin who enjoyed golf,
no matter how hard it rained.

A Bizarre
THE NORTH SHORE
Neighbourhood House, 225
East 2nd Street, North Van-
couver, will be holding its
first annual Bizarre Bazaar
on Saturday, October !. This
fun-filled day will include a
children’s festival, a banana-
sply bonanza, a pancake
eating contest, a fitness
demonstration, fortune

tellers and a variety of other

Suite 210

sill up ay V8In)
large" Oo plaz2 (Manne Dive 4
Hollyoum . ef r
in West Vancouy helping you wilh

925-1212
PRIME TRAVEL

Aa) 1760 Marine Drive. West Van
X

CI4 - Sunday, September 25, 1983 - North Shore News

Exit husband for six hours
every day, resisting all sug-
gestions that he allow our
four year old to caddy for
him.

Ah, the good old days -
before Pampers. Ever try

by Barbara
McCreadie

washing diapers by hand in a
tin tub? Or driving eighteen
miles in heavy rain with three
kids, a dog and a sloshing
diaper. pail?

There are few things that
freak me out quite like
spiders. From little striped
hoppy ones to big fat crunchy
ones, .1I hate ‘em all.
Shawnigan must have a large

corner of the spider market -

they turned up in the sink, in
the shower, in the beds and
cfunking across the floor,

Bazaar

events.

The bazaar will run from
11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. and ad-
mission is free. The bazaar
will also provide an oppor-
tunity to introduce the new
fall programs offered at
North Shore Neighbourhood
House.

For more information, call
987-8138.

stairs IA ine

Hollyburn Plaza

Mompber of NITA

iving in ‘ ona lake’ isn’t all p

especially at night.

I was so glad to get home
that I kissed my dishwasher.

One other ‘‘vacation’’
cured me forever of cabin
fever. A friend asked me to
babysit her three cats for a
week at her cabin at Alta
Lake. Brian and our oldest
daughter would stay in town
until the week end while the
two youngest and I would
holiday at the cabin.

Things got off to a great
start when the three cats got
their first glimpse of our
fierce dog. Maggie was five
pounds of fighting fury,
disguised as a rag mop. She
thought the cats were fine
fellows while all three felines
took to the woods. One even-
tually came back but the
others spent the next week in
the bush.

Next day I met the
neighbors who gave me lots

. of helpful advice: Don’t put

any garbage outside, there
was a bear in my garden
yesterday afternoon. The no-
seeums are bad this year, did
you bring any ‘‘Off’’? The
kid up the way nearly drown-
ed in the lake last week. The
dock tips if you step in the
wrong place. We’ve sure had
a lot of skunks this year, br-
ing any tomato juice with
you? Watch for black widow
spiders in the woodpile.

Yeah, that was some week.
When | got home I not only
kissed my dishwasher but the
floor it sat on.

I don’t know who gets the
most benefit out of summer
cabins. Kids seem to love
them and fondly remember
the outdoor privvies, wood
stoves and assorted wild life.

Husbands usually love
them, especiaily if they can
ship Mom and the kids to the
cabin for two months while
they commute on weekends.

A friend of mine loves his
home at Birch Bay. They live
in a condo here so they could
avoid gardening, outside
repairs and all the fixing and
fussing that goes with a
house. Instead, they spend
half their time looking after a
huge garden and an elderly
cabin, constantly in need of
repairs. He proudly showed
me huge blisters on both
hands after spending a
weekend on the business end
of a post-hole digger.
‘“*Replaced the whole back
fence myself!’’ he announced
proudly.

One thing about cabins, if
you’ve got teen-age kids
they’ll get a lot of use out of
them. I fondly remember
some rip-roaring parties | at-
tended in my youth at various
cabins scattered around the
lower mainland. Somebody’s
parents always seemed to be
out of town, leaving the keys
of the cabin with their kids,
properly cautioned about the
use of same.

Summer

cabins are an
economical way to cut your
travel budget. Why spend

thousands of dollars on a trip
to Europe when you can stay
right here at home? Hawaii
for Christmas? Why bother
when you can have all the fun
of stoking the wood stove
with wood you've cut
yourself? Trouble with vaca-
tion homes is that if you’ve
got them you have to use
them - instead of all those
other things you’d prefer to
do.

People proudly announce
that the summer property
they bought for $8,000 in
1960 is worth ten times that
amount today. Weill, so is the
house you live in. The figures
look good on paper but eight
thousand then bought just
about the same as eighty

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today.

And, if anyone has a hot
property, right on the lake
that they’d care to unload,
don’t call me.

WAIKIKt

Air only

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8 Days. 7 Nights Air & Hotel

LASVEGAS = $289

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