All because two people fell in love…

I was raised on a Wisconsin horse farm by parents who encouraged me to never stop learning. They also taught me the value of hard work even though I didn’t appreciate it when I was young and my help was required in the garden or the horse barn. Weeding was not my favorite and I’ve come full circle now that I’m the mom & my kids are now the ones not enthusiastic about yard work. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I grew up playing sports, was in 4-H, went to private school until 6th grade and then graduated in a class of 66 before headed off to college in Illinois. Confession: I went to college for the experience, not because I had any clue what I wanted to major in. I took the typical freshman classes with one exception - ceramics which I had loved in high school.

By the end of my freshman year I declared geography as my major. I was fascinated by the relation between our environment and people after taking a Cultural Geography class that first year. I added an environmental studies minor and began to consider a career in a National Park. It seemed the perfect fit with my love of the outdoors/adventure travel and the mission of the National Park Service to preserve places with natural and cultural significance. In my teens & twenties I was given opportunities to travel the world and I cherish those memories of horseback trips into the Snowy Range mountains of Wyoming, white water rafting in Costa Rica, backpacking in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, hiking the Inca Trail in Peru, whale watching in Argentina and marveling at the mountain scenery of Switzerland. I came home from Europe at age 22 to fulfill my college internship credit at Voyageurs National Park in International Falls, Minnesota. It was there that my greatest adventure began.

Standing across the room during orientation for all the interpretive rangers was PapaBear. Over two summers at Voyageurs we became the best of friends. We discovered we’d both been in Europe at the same time. He’d even been on the same train as some of my classmates on their way to Barcelona. It was while I was studying in Vienna that I got the news about my internship opportunity at Voyageurs. In a way only God could orchestrate, the phone call came from home 30 minutes before my train for Paris was leaving. I had to leave it up to my mom to decide if I should take an unpaid internship and dashed off to catch my train. I returned to our hostel 10 days later and called my mom on the payphone in the hall to find out what she decided. That was 1998 after all…. Thanks Mom for saying YES!

PapaBear and I got married in 2001 and spent one more season at Voyageurs before moving back to be closer to family. In 2008 our kids were three and one when the economy tanked. We needed to sell our house. The Lord opened an incredible door for us to become caretakers at a county park after our house sold. It was a great fit with PapaBear’s park and rec degree and my experience at Voyageurs as an Interpretive Ranger. We moved into a giant five bedroom house with a 200 acre backyard. There was a disco golf course, 2 playgrounds, trails, campfire programs, a beach, tennis courts, a sledding hill, and some pretty sweet snow mountains created by the maintenance guys who plowed the parking lots in the winter. Our position only provided housing/utilities which was AWESOME, but we still had to have day jobs. Our schedules allowed for 45 minutes of family time each day. It got really hard to enjoy all those amenities in that small window of time.

By 2014 we were burned out. It was time to put our trust in God’s plan for our lives and find a new place to live where nobody would ring the doorbell at 11pm, our phones wouldn’t ring at 2am, and I could delete the Sheriff’s number from my phone contacts. Don’t get me wrong…we have TONS of good memories from our campground days, but with three kids who were getting older and involved in a couple activities each….. we needed a better work/family balance.

How do you find a home that compares to what we’d be leaving behind? It was daunting to even consider. But in His perfect timing a house that wasn’t even on the market was suggested to us. It was exactly what we were looking for. Correction - it was MORE than what we were looking for. Check out the yard I have the privilege to tend. It was in the perfect location which was very important to me. It was my dream to be able to walk to school and church. It’s been almost six years now and I still appreciate how convenient it is. There was a gap in housing between financing and moving in so we spent 3 months living with PapaBear’s parents before we moved into our forever home.

This summer we will celebrate 6 years here. Ironically that is the same amount of time we lived in the campground.

Sam and Julia are15 and13, and our BabyBear, Elsa, who was born when we were caretakers is 8. We can walk to church, school, two different parks, and best of all we have the TIME and freedom to enjoy our simple life in town. We aren’t missing games or family gatherings anymore. Life is still busy with three active kids, but we sneak in kayaking, fishing, tennis, and bike rides whenever we can. We even go BACK TO THE CAMPGROUND to enjoy the trails and disc golf. Sure we don’t technically live in the campground anymore, but we raised our kids there for six years and that time there shaped our priorities going forward.

I love to share photos of our adventures and lessons we’ve learned as we walk this road the Lord has laid out for us. It has been lined with many blessings for sure! PapaBear and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary next summer. I thank God every day for bringing him into my life. It’s been the greatest adventure….all because two people fell in love.

- Carrie “4MamaBear”

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