The mysterious apartment

I didn't realize it at the time, but I threw some of my Facebook friends into a mild state of confusion when  I started posting about "the apartment" several months ago.  Many of you said, "um, what happened to your house?"  Sorry about the confusion folks! For years, while the family has skied, and especially since The Boy has been on a snowboard team, the family has driven 2 (sometimes 3) hours each way to get to and from the mountains.  We've couch surfed, found last minute deals (or not deals) at hotels, driven through blizzards....and sighed that we "needed" a better solution.  We looked last winter and continued last spring and summer, but as most of you know, seasonal ski rentals are not cheap.  I had a (hilarious?) conversation with a realtor who told me he knew the perfect place--it would only be $40,000 for the season (and he was serious...I don't know who he thought I was though...umm, $40,000?).

In October, we saw a listing for a year rental on an apartment in the little town of Alma.  The price is manageable and better than anyplace else.  The deal-maker was that the landlord said, "Why wouldn't you be able to bring your dogs up?  Everyone up here has dogs..." and the icing on the cake (so to speak) is that it now has a functional washer and dryer. Before you all line up to come stay in our mountain home, here are the details (you can come...just bring a sleeping bag and prepare to be cozy....):
To begin...this is what the car usually looks like when we are all going up:

The cats stay home.  Morrison has a seatbelt and sits in the back seat, Liberty also has a tether/seatbelt, since a few weeks ago she tried to climb over Morrison and the children to sit on Pete's lap while he drove.  Not fun. Liberty gets to sit with a cooler and whatever else we are taking up. I love the look on Morrison's face here....
Looks like this trip the children are holding stuff on their laps.  I'm always holding stuff on my lap, and on my feet and so on (as my mother said once, "all that stuff that goes around a mom's feet, because there isn't anywhere else to put it".  It is a lovely drive up, usually, very scenic and less traffic than I70 usually.  Before the weather turned to winter, we stopped at the famous hot dog for lunch (they have outside tables, so the dogs could "sit") but we usually just drive straight up (or back).

The apartment is in the town of Alma, which advertises itself as "America's HIGHEST Incorporated City". We aren't really sure which way they mean "highest", but we're pretty sure it works on a couple different levels....Situated at 10, 578 feet above sea level, Alma is considered not only an alpine desert, but the climate is considered subartic.  It boasts two dispensaries (one medicinal and one recreational), a Montasorri school, a vet, a bar, a coffee shop, and an estimated year-round population of about 200 people.  (There are, however, approximately 1,000 people living in its "subdivisions"...how ever that works...).  They also have bingo at the town hall on Thursday nights (we haven't made it there on a Thursday), a guy who sells fresh eggs behind the bar, and a couple realtors.  Oh, and the Al-mart...which should get its own post, but I'll just link it here instead...it is my favorite store ever....(Their website seems to be down...but they have a facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/AlMartGeneralStore/)
Here are a couple pictures of our drive through town, our apartment in on the North side of town and we enter from the south:

We live up  the hill, down a couple dirt roads--here is the road off the main street (This was in October, before it started snowing...)

And here is our road...

And the house that is a permanent fixture on the Air BNB site (possibly a better choice than sleeping bags on our floor, but we haven't checked it our fully yet...)

Our apartment is in the basement of a cute little ranch house, with parking for 1-4 cars, depending on how much snow there is.  So far we've been able to fit the upstair tenant's car and ours in without any problems..if we really had two cars up there, I think one would have to be parked in the "Alma City free parking" down the hill...  We have our own outside entrance, which, now that there is snow, requires us to dig our way into and out of the apartment some days.  (The forest view is incredible though!)

The upstairs of the house uses propane, but we have all electric.   Our apartment only takes up half the basement. The other half may be another apartment someday, but right now is undergoing renovations, the previous tenants from the upstairs left it quite a mess (it connects to the upstairs, but the landlord is in the process of blocking it off and making it another apartment or office space for her).

We have a cute little patio outside the apartment--the pile of trash is gone now, replaced by a lot of snow--Mr. IM says it was quite windy last night as he used our tiny little grill out there!  The deck doesn't extend quite to our door, it ends a few feet before, but there is a large covered area where we now have a couple chairs for when it gets warmer (like in April....)

We did quite a bit of "helping" getting the place habitable--apparently the last tenant in our unit also treated it kind of badly.  The landlord repainted and did a lot of cleaning and trash hauling.  She was still working when we took occupancy, which may be part of the reason we got such a great deal.  It is tiny--Mr. IM and I figure it is no bigger than our first apartment at Purdue, possibly a little smaller (but hard to judge, because the layouts are very different.  There is a full kitchen, no dishwasher, small stove (but all our pans from Purdue's Married Student Housing fit!) and a lot of weird cabinets.  If we lived there all the time I'd figure out some way of using the cabinets better, but they are fine for a "ski place".  The table is perfect for maj jong..




Living room--with our futon where The Girl and Liberty the dog sleep....

There is one bedroom.  This is before we put a mattress on the top and installed hooks and bins to store everything...There is a decent sized closet as well and a nice set of built-in shelves that big "bins" from Dollar Tree fit on perfectly.  The bunk bed is a loaner from the landlord--with it and the futon we are able to sleep five people (as long as they don't mind togetherness)

We've had to be a little creative, the bathroom is tiny and the bedroom doesn't have a door, so we're all learning about changing in the closet and wearing layers.

So there it is--it is very cozy, but it works and we are happy to have found it.  We have a six-month lease, with the option to continue for a year. The six months are up on April 15 and we are seriously considering keeping it through the summer so we can spend some time up there when it isn't snowing :)