Is There a Move in Your Second Half?

It’s official; we’re moving to Carmel.

We might be crazy to add the stress of a cross-country move on top of all the other changes of the past several months, but as I sit here watching it snow (again) in Minnesota, I know we’re doing the right thing.

OG and I have been vacationing in Carmel (on the central California coast two hours south of San Francisco) for the past five years. About a year and a half ago, we splurged and bought a vacation condo in a wonderful location with a view of the mountains and only a few blocks from the beach, thinking it would be the perfect getaway for the five years before I retired. If you follow this blog, you know fate threw a monkey wrench into my retirement plans last summer, turning years into months, and we began to evaluate every aspect of our Second Half. What exactly do we want to do with our time, and where do we want to do it?

For years, the Monterey Peninsula has drawn me like a magnet. For a lifelong Midwesterner (and flatlander), the combination of sea, rocky shoreline, sandy beaches, and mountains is magical. I marvel at the softness of the air and the unfamiliar vegetation. I even love the fog. We rarely have fog in the plains, and when we do it’s thick, solid ground fog—nothing like the mysterious floating fingers of coastal fog that glide above the highway and through the pine-covered hills.

OG has always been a winter-hater at heart, and in Minnesota he’s housebound for several months a year except to shovel snow and run essential errands. The first few weeks of retirement gave me a taste of what that’s like, and I hated it, too. I want so much more for our Second Half. I want to go for walks and work in the garden. I want OG to be able to play golf and take sailing lessons if he chooses.

It’s scary to think of leaving the familiarity of the place we’ve lived for twenty-three years, the place we raised our daughter. OG worries about finding a new barber who will cut his hair perfectly every time. We know we’ll never be able to replace our wonderful dentist, and at our age that’s a serious concern! But there’s more to life than barbers and dentists. With the demise of my job, we no longer have any real ties to Minnesota. Our daughter only comes home a couple of times a year, and we have no family here. It’s time to suit ourselves and move on.

We began house hunting in Carmel last November and settled on a house during our trip last week. We chose a modest ranch house in Carmel Valley a few miles inland from the coast with a glorious view of the mountains. The house is in dismal condition, so fixing it up will be a several-month project. I’ll post updates as we move along. Who ever said the Second Half would be dull?