We entitled our blog "The Lavin's North Country News", but as you will see, right now our news is originating from Fort Clark Springs, Texas. We thought we should give a little background as to how we arrived at having, what we feel, is the best of two worlds.

After spending more than 25 years shoveling snow and enduring bitterly cold Minnesota winters, we decided we had had enough and started looking for a warmer place to spend some time during the winter months. Where was that perfect warm spot? Did such a place even exist? A few years ago we took our first winter vacation in the hopes of answering that question for ourselves. We had heard a lot of nice things about south Texas and decided to check it out. We went all the way down to the southern most part of the state, and discovered that it was infested with people--and more people, and even more people. That just wasn't for us.

How about Florida? The next winter we took about a month and traveled to Florida and did all the touristy things--Disneyland and Sea World. Weather was wonderful, but again, there were just too many people. Not only that, it is a very expensive place to live. Crossed Florida off the list of "perfect places".

We were getting discouraged about finding that special spot to get away from the cold weather. That spring we ran into friends of ours who told us about a little piece of heaven in southwest Texas--Fort Clark Springs. They were excited about this place and talked us into giving it a try. Winter 2007 we rented a condo for two months and began falling in love with the area. We spent most of our time looking at housing and land, discussing the pros and cons of owning property or renting, how long could we really spend down here in the winter, and especially, if we would want to spend the entire winter in the south. The decision was made--we became Winter Texans.

The next winter we built a small one room home which we call our Texas cabin. This is our second full winter in the house and we are having a great time. Seems like we are always busy doing something--the time sure does fly. We stay in Minnesota until mid-November and then head south. By the end of April we start packing up to head north again and usually reach home sometime during the first week of May . There is nothing better than summers in northern Minnesota and then enjoying the warmer weather of a Texas winter--the best of both worlds!