Snowboarder Performing Jump Silverton, Colorado, USA
The story of the Wild West celebrated a spirit of adventure.
Starting over with new beginnings full of promise.
Fueled by dreams of striking it rich.
We have a rich history of mining and panning for gold nuggets in the West.
Making a life based on ingenuity, resourcefulness and self-reliance.
Back then, whenever travelers met each other on the road, they swapped info about the places they came from and asked questions about places they were going.
But for us, every day we follow the rules.
Go to work.
Keep our nose to the grindstone.
Marry our sweet hearts.
Raise our children.
Save for their college education.
And, finally retire sometime off into the distant future to a glorious second half of our life.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but one day everything changed.
Employers shipped our jobs overseas.
We worked longer and longer in jobs we couldn’t stand.
But, at least we had a job.
But, the stress piled on.
And on.
Because of that we had to escape.
If only for a vacation.
There’s nothing quite as all-American as a road trip…
especially in the West, where a wealth of culture, natural beauty and excitement unfolds before you.
What is it about traveling back to nature?
Where you feel most inspired?
Where the yellow aspen do that shimmering dance beside the deep green of the lodgepole pines.
But, there’s a dark side to vacations.
We notice our predicament when we return to work.
Are we who we really, really are when we keep our head down with our noses to the grindstone?
What about those expansive western skies?
The majestic mountain peaks?
The rushing babbling creeks and brooks?
The taste of salt in the air along the coast?
We keep those nagging questions at bay.
Maybe bubbling up only occasionally in dreamland.
Until finally we wake up and realize we don’t live in our bubble any longer.
We make a commitment to ourselves.
We can make healthy, wealthy and wise choices for living, loving, working, playing, investing and retiring in vacation communities.
Where we feel the most alive.
Steps:
(21) Spend the time to find the best places to live and invest. It will be worth your while. The great thing about living where others spend their vacation is the year round quality-of-life.
Rafael told me on one of our earlier trips that they had grown tired of Hawaii, where they had run a restaurant for years.
Cabo San Lucas
“When is this real estate bubble going to pop?”
Words of wisdom from Harry Dent.
“Spend the time to find the best place to live and invest. It will be worth your while.”
From the days of the original beachfront resort – the Hotel Hacienda Beach Resort, in a sleepy little fishing village – the number of hotels rooms available has exploded.
In the 5 years prior to 2003 they almost doubled.
Sun Setting on Paradise
A clear sign back then that Cabo had passed the “Innovation” stage and entered the 10% to 25% breakout “Growth” phase.
It’s easy to see why, watching the sun setting, overlooking Medano Beach and the Sea of Cortez?
Or sitting at a bar table underneath the azure blue umbrella on the patio, steps away from the lower pool.
Relaxing Pool Side
The word on the street estimated it would take 15 years before Cabo hit world-class resort development status – moving through “emerging and rapid growth stages.”
But, the word around the pool in casual conversations was actually a question.
“When is this real estate bubble going to pop?”
Dent projected it to begin sometime in 2009, more than 5 years away.
In the evening I walked up a dirt lined street and a short hill to the pink restaurant, Casa Rafael’s, between the Hotel Hacienda and Marina Sol.
Time to Dream New Dreams
Ah, this is the life, isn’t it?
It’s real easy to fall in love with a tropical resort.
Syncing Your Bio Rhythms
Once your bio- rhythms synchronize with the pace of life and the prevailing trade winds, you can see why resorts top the list of nine types of places to invest in, can’t you?
I had heard rumors that the owners came to visit Cabo San Lucas some time in the 1980s and never left.
They opened the restaurant in the early ’90s.
Rafael’s brother mentioned the same 15-year period David did earlier, but when I asked him what he’d do after Cabo became too developed for his tastes, he said, “Move to Cuba.”
Explosion of Growth
When it comes to resort areas, these guys like to get in at the innovation or early growth breakout stage.
Casa Rafael’s
Rafael’s brother regaled us with fishing stories on pristine beaches and ultra friendly people.
It turns out his family is from Cuba.
And that may be why, in addition to the six course meal, they offered Cuban cigars.
Beginning a Six Course Meal
Rafael told me on one of our earlier trips that they had grown tired of Hawaii, where they had run a restaurant for years.
Cabo at Night
When we finished, Rafael’s wife suggested we take the taxi, instead of walking down the hill above Medano Beach to the Marina and Sancho Panza for Jazz entertainment.
Steps:
(9)) Conduct a preliminary marketing study of the top 4 or 5 favorite places — focus on the intersection between ease of acceptance and degree of support for your Mobile KnowCo.
An excerpt from Book Three in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find the place of your dreams.
“The big houses, the Humvees, the SUVs, all of that is just the same here and in a way, people are really conspicuous consumers here in the country just like in the city.“
Self Reliance: escaping Laguna Beach, building a cabin in the Durango wilderness.
An excerpt from Book Three in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find the place of your dreams.
From Durango take US-550 north to Silverton for just under 50 miles or just over an hour’s drive depending upon weather and road conditions, or … take the narrow gauge train.
From Durango to Telluride take CO-145 north for just under 115 miles or just over a 2-hour drive — or follow 550 north from Silverton and cut back on Sherman St.
From Durango to Mesa Verde National Park take Highway 160 west 35 miles to absorb its spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo with its 600 cliff dwellings.
So, let’s pick Durango as our “Basecamp” and take day trips to explore all the remaining outposts.
But, first a seasonal precaution, similar to the one issued to travelers attempting to navigate the Tioga Pass short cut out of Yosemite valley on their way to the Eastern Sierra portion of the Sierra Nevada travel region.
The heavy snows force road closures.
You travel on Highway 160 from Pagosa Springs to Durango for about 60 miles which will take over an hour based on traffic, weather and road conditions.
Locals will tell you the trip north on 160 from Pagosa Springs to Alamosa, CO can be treacherous during all seasons as you drive through Wolf Creek Pass.
The road receives heavy snowfall and is often closed during the winter.
Many people die each year when driving through the steep grades and tight switchbacks.
So,be especially careful when driving during the winter.
And, if that’s not enough.
While Highway 160 west to Durango, CO is safe except through the pass, be extremely wary of wildlife at night and icy roads in winter.
There is no cellular service from Aspen Springs to Bayfield (30 mi).
And, some long-time, self-sufficient Durango residents living on the wild edge really, really like it that way.
Thomas Curwen writing in the Los Angeles Times at the end of spring in 2005, “Lives set to a wilder rhythm” profiled authors who stepped outside the gridlock of modern life and set up in the woods.
Curwen interviewed David Petersen who purchased an acre and a half of land now some thirty-three years ago 15 miles outside of Durango, Colo.
Petersen had built a cabin, and at the article’s publication date, had lived there all this time with his wife.
The cabin served as a home base for his lifestyle business.
Then 59 years old, a 55+ Baby Boomer, he worked for the conservation organization Trout Unlimited, and wrote “On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life”
In it he explored the satisfactions and dilemmas posed by wilderness and self-sufficiency in the world as it was a decade ago.
Like the Whitefish, Montana, ex-Californians — Dudley from Woodland Hills and Arthur from Chino — Petersen became eager to leave the Golden State.
Having spent the ’70s when he was in his ’20s, the age of today’s Millennials, living along the California coast in Laguna Beach.
Back then, what could have been better?
Laguna Canyon Road attracted kids like him in their 20s looking for self-expression following the human potential movement.
Struggling artists, musicians and surfers hung out on the beach next to the Hotel Laguna. But, then …
“Real estate prices tripled, it got too crowded, too noisy.”
Here, then is a snapshot first taken in the summer of 2008, three years after Curwen’s article, describing Laguna Beach’s more permanent physical profile.
Location At-A-Glance
Region: Western United States, Pacific Coast Region
State: California
Travel Region: Southern California, South Coast Region
County: Orange
Town: Laguna Beach
Real Estate Phase: Late Maturity
Population Density: Town and Country, Suburbs
Three decades earlier, Petersen feared the worst for Laguna Beach.
And, for his like-minded, long-time resident friends it did.
In 2008, roughly 30 years after he settled in Durango’s wilderness, Laguna became the home of artists, Wireless Resorters and Wealthy Influentials.
Relocating from the Southern California coast to the mountains was more of an escape — a running away, of a trying to flee something instead of trying to go toward something
He didn’t target Durango, Colorado, though.
I didn’t have any goal in mind other than just living in a clean, wild place and trying to construct a life that would allow me as much personal freedom and control over my time as possible.
He could have chosen any of the other authentic towns on the California BOF bucket list like in:
Southern California — Idyllwild, 92549; Julian, 92036 and Lake Arrowhead, 92352 in the local mountains; or
Sierra Nevada — Oakhurst, 93644; North Fork, 93643; Bishop, 93514; Squaw Valley, 96146; Tahoe City, 96145; and Truckee, 96161; or
Central Coast — Big Sur, 93920 along Pacific Coast Highway in Monterey County near the Esalen Institute or the Camaldoli Hermitage.
But, once in Durango, he built the cabin using post-and-beam construction because it was easy.
“You sink upright posts 3 feet in the ground as the main supports, then string the wall beams horizontally along those.
One day I realized I’d cut a post a couple feet too short, but rather than pull it out and do all that work, I just went along the line and cut all the other posts off to match the short one.”
That short-cut came back to haunt him.
“I must have had sunstroke that day because losing that 2 feet of roof along the high edge reduced what was to have been a loft room to a crawl-space attic and reduced the slope of the roof sufficiently that it doesn’t slide snow well.
It is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”
While some lifestyle business people pursue the magic of living off the grid, Petersen had something else in mind.
My primary aspiration has been self-reliance more than self-sufficiency. I find self-sufficiency an impossible dream in this modern world. You can’t get away from it entirely, and frankly, there’s a lot of good stuff there that you don’t want to get away from.
He set up “Basecamp” before it became easy to open a Knowledge ATM, so he told Curwen there’s a lot of bartering that goes on here as well.
I will trade labor and meat and things like that to people who have orchards and people who do have great gardens.
The important thing, no matter where you live, is for a self-directed life, a recognition that by choosing simplicity in whatever ways you can, you reduce your reliance on materialism.
When he chose the title “On the Wild Edge,” what he wanted to get across was we’ve become slaves to our possessions.
It’s not a dropping out.
It’s positioning yourself where you can pick and choose.
He was careful not to paint a picture that this is the best way to live. Especially encouraging even more people to come booming out of the cities.
As you’re talking about your new high-end development, that’s the same thing that’s happened to this place since the mid-’90s.
And there’s just not enough room for everybody to live in the country.
It seems the majority of people that have moved here in the last few years are bringing their city attitudes with them.
The big houses, the Humvees, the SUVs, all of that is just the same here and in a way, people are really conspicuous consumers here in the country just like in the city.
Only Moab is a bigger mountain-bike capital than Durango, he said.
I pass them — the mountain bikers, that is — on the trail up in the forest, and it’s not just that you shouldn’t be here because I don’t like it, it’s because you’re going so fast, you’re not seeing anything, you’re not hearing anything, you’re not smelling anything.
Just get off that thing and relax, walk, go sit under a tree somewhere for a while.
You get so much more out of it.
Steps:
22. Selectively evaluate the best quality-of-life communities to live in and weigh the tradeoffs of risk and rewards for accruing real estate appreciation along a progression of rural and small towns that meet what your pocket books can afford.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but one day everything changed.
We worked longer and longer in jobs we couldn’t stand.
