That said, though, it would not be a waste of time to read through this site to get a full taste of what it will be like when you finally find your own dream home in the Northwoods. In fact, an even more intimate view can be found inside the site with thoughts of a family member that poetically describes experiences growing up in a Northwoods environment. Then call Jeff and put him to work...
There is no such thing as crowding on 734 acre White Sand Lake lake - limited to only 31 residential properties around it. And...less, actually because the thirty-one residents aren't ever here all at the same time. What you'll have are two houses and locations close by in a convenient arrangement centered around the freedom to have options, after you arrive at your Northwoods destination.
Here is an opportunity for you to have a year-round seasonal choice, as well as other choices when you might want to separate yourself from other things going on during your time here. The freedom to have the control for a meaningful retreat from the bustle around you. It's
why you're here. You don't want to compromise your valuable time in a one dimensional home away from home, now do you? Here you have that freedom.
There's no need to get on a plane to some other part of the world when you have a place like this to come to anytime you want.
We begin with "Milo." It's the lodge home on the lake, and because of this, it is likely to be the favored one in the hearts of your family. Why? Because this will be the place for your summer vacations for sure. Oh, yeah! The younger you are the more that means to you - many of your longstanding childhood memories are of what occurred during those summer vacations. Children grow into something new every year on summer vacation, and while it may not be outwardly obvious to their parents, the impact on them is life-long memorable. Not being a noisy high-population resort like those down south, imagine the quality of growth a summer home
on White Sand Lake will afford you and your family.
You've wanted a place like this all of your life anyway, haven't you?
Program note: this website covers two homes, the lake property shown above, and the second home here to the left being a relatively new construction home adjacent to the lakefront property. There is no intent to confuse you here, and if you arrived here from a listing for the home to the left and would like to jump down the page and read about it first, jump away! You can then later return up here to read about Milo, the lodge on White Sand Lake.
The road alongside White Sand Lake is a bit special. Although it comes with a very ordinary sounding name "County Road K," it also comes with a very unique and legal designation: Rustic Road. This Wisconsin
Road preservation program sets aside roads that have been nominated by citizens and given state and local approval into the program. The speed limit is held under 45, it is not littered with signs and billboards, and it is to be
preserved in both appearance and function - the road doesn't get wider than this. A fall drive through County K alongside White Sand Lake under a canopy of blazing color will take your breath away.
Milo began it's life as an American Plan Resort in the 1800s. The property under your consideration now was then the lodge for the resort where hundreds of families over the years were fed the three
squares that were a part of their all-inclusive vacation package. Times changed
following the peak of the American Plan in 1960 and the American style of vacation gave way to cheap gas, modernized campgrounds, Airstream Trailers, and then
RVs.
Over the years the resort was sold and broken up into an enclave of logical parcels with the Lodge being one of them.
Being the original resort lodge, it was sited at the forward position on the property, and
it occupies the commanding view in panorama over much of the width of the lake. Milo is located toward the northern end of White Sand Lake on the south shore - perfectly placed to enjoy the cool breezes coming in from the north. Behind the foliage at the left of the widescreen window view below is a peninsula jutting out from across the lake. To the right is the main body of the lake. A far better photographic view of all this could be had with a judicious bit of tree pruning, but the present owner likes those trees. You may think otherwise now, but after your visit you may agree with him, for the live view through real
eyes and not a glass lens allows you to see clearly all that is beyond over the lake. It is a soul cleansing view.
The lodge kitchen and storage areas were converted into three bedrooms, one a master with its own bathroom and two additional bedrooms and a bathroom in the hall. The original dining room remains intact with the home's present kitchen placed in the rear corner with a cook's view over the whole scene. Nice.
Two significant additions to the home were both built by Gabert Construction, a high-end local builder with a long waiting list. The first addition
converted the front porch area into additional
great room space including the stone fireplace there on the left and a wall of floor to ceiling windows across the front bringing that panoramic lake view into the home. This was all finished off with a new lounge depth deck across the front of the home. More recently, a substantial addition to the side of the home, extends
a 15 X 23 foot screened (three sides) porch with a hot tub in the center, and anchored off to the side by another stone fireplace - mirroring the one behind in the great room.
Outside, of course, you have White Sand Lake and your 100 foot wide shorefront. A pier and boat dock with dual Shore Stations and a swimming raft provides your access to all the lake activities here on White Sand Lake. If you are looking to drop your
jet-ski into the water and ruin the peaceful quiet here on this
prime fishing lake, please stop reading now and head south - you have come just a bit too far. This is a
lake for water skiing and fishing, for which the lakes in the Northwoods are well known.
Chances are, you are searching for lakefront property here because you already are familiar with the area, and have been looking for awhile, but for the uninitiated, here is a brief rundown of the area:
This White Sand Lake is in Vilas County, actually home to two lakes with that name. Our lake is is one to the east, between Star Lake to the south and Boulder Junction to the north. This one doesn't have a town on it's shore or any businesses for that matter. It's quiet here and that is why people want to be here.
Vilas County is home to some of the most sought after real estate in Wisconsin. The main reason for this is that the state owns around 85% of
the land here. This is land that will not be developed, so that keeps the population down and with little to develop, any that does become available gets noticed in a hurry. The developable property here in particular is nearly developed out (one lot remaining). All thirty-one of 'em. Think about that for a minute: a whopping 31 total lots on a lake with 5.40 miles of shoreline!
So, Milo on White Sand Lake coming on the market now is not something to take lightly if you are already looking.
This is a place on earth where the real-property ownership concept of "quiet enjoyment" gets a real workout, at least during the summer. The summer specialties on the lake are fishing, swimming, canoeing, and kayaking. On-land you have cycling and hiking. Winter sports are cross-country skiing, and here it can get a bit noisier in places with snowmobiles.
At some point a few years ago, the owners decided they wanted a means to expand the number of family and friends they could entertain here through the entire year, so they bought three lots just across the road. Three lots that back up to more of that state land that covers the county. They built a new home and a large garage to house their ever growing number of toys.
This is where the multiple choice vacation property we were talking about earlier comes in. The obvious choice here is summer/winter because that is an easy yin-yang situation in a resort property. However, if you have an extended family, a group of neighbors, or possibly your 'family' is a work group you would like to have a creative retreat for, or if you have a rowdy and noisy bunch in your group and you need to keep 'em separated, or maybe a separate location for a more adult group to have as a party house, or......for all of these and many more reasons you can think of given the unique life you lead, to have a property capable of both handling large groups and occasional separation of those groups, a single property won't do for you.
So we come now to the property that is across the road, and has been named, "Across the Road."
Again using Gabert Construction - in Boulder Junction WI. A word about Gabert: this is a company
with a reputation for no-compromise construction. As you go through this house, try to find something that doesn't fit. Everything here is solid - the wood floor is almost like walking on a slab of concrete. Much of the interior wood is tongue-and-groove, the walls, ceiling, floors, and
creaks - if you can find any, are quiet. You can put a level anywhere you want to and find that indeed it is level. It's why you get on a waiting list before you get to use them...
While we are mentioning contractors here, the landscaping was designed and completed by Stoney Creek Landscaping in Minocqua WI. Featuring a tastefully assembled stone walkway and rubble retaining wall leading down by a fire-pit off-camera to the right and then down to the patio at the rear of the home.
The home is surrounded with exterior features - an open deck and a screened-in porch too, and further around in back is an outdoor hot-tub. All around behind you is
land that is not developable as it is owned by the state of Wisconsin. That's privacy.
The home has a log cabin motif, and is not real log cabin construction, which is a good thing. Underneath that great looking siding is a stick-built home and all of the good things that come with that type of construction. A real log cabin would be a lot of settling and adjustment grief over time as the logs shrink(!) so you will have none of that stuff here.
The entire main floor of this home is an open floor-plan. Eye contact can be had from nearly every location in the room with only two steps needed to get out of the only blind spot created out of necessity for the bathroom. The interior of this home is a vista unto itself. THE WINDOW at the rear
of the home is 12 feet wide and 12 feet high, and you can imagine what the view would be with snow slowly coming in filtering down between the trees. With the fireplace going, yeah!
The pine tongue and groove used for each of the walls and ceiling were given stain treatments designed so that during the day - when the home is filled with sunlight, the pitched ceiling feels weightless, airy, and quite high. Then, when the sun recedes and the natural light level goes down, the wood colors change and have the reversal effect of lowering the ceiling level to a more intimate and warm feel for the evening into night, as you begin to see in these photos.
The dining area and kitchen sit under what is probably the only piece of sheetrock in the house. The sheetrock guy didn't get much work on this house, that's for sure... Anyway, there is a lot of room here for a rather large gathering if you need it - you could fit a 12 foot table here and seat a crowd. This area in the front half of the house is under the loft and the resulting lower ceiling helps to lower the dining conversation level to a more intimate level.
The kitchen is at the front of the home, right at the entry, and has a view over the entire great room and dining area. The countertops are maple, and the cabinets are cherry for a soft and classy contrast. This is a chef's kitchen, featuring GE Profile appliances in matching black, with a countertop range, two large ovens, one under the
cooktop and the other under the counter at the wall. A dishwasher and refrigerator complete the appliances, and are complimented by a matching black ceramic double sink at the corner window looking out over the front of the home. Come to think of it now, the cook has all the views here..hmmmmm. Could you find yourself enjoying your time here?
Yes, there are great restaurants all around here, but why go out when you can have a better dining experience right here?
A full bath is located on the main floor, with a tub shower and an enclosed commode, and cabinets made of hickory. And then...there's the sauna, a nice addition to any bathroom don't you think? Lined with cedar, this is the place to go after you've
stressed out all day kayaking, cycling or cross country skiing. Now, it doesn't get much better than that, right?
Up the circular stairs is the loft, which is a very large, actually somewhat oversized master bedroom. You can just disappear up here and nobody would know you're up here, because...the floors don't creak! Even though it is the "loft," you still have high ceilings up here because of the pitch of the roof. Nonetheless, you are at the high point in this room, and there is a fan in the middle of the room to move the warm air that is bound to collect up here. The room has a half-bath lavatory, and two seating areas, one in the middle of the room, and the other next to the window at the front of the house.
If you are now thinking that one bedroom won't cut it here, fear not, because there is an entire floor that is the heated basement that can be finished out with plenty more living space should you need this. There is over a thousand square feet down there that can be built out any way you would like.
All the services are pushed back into the corner areas, so they won't take much of the space away from your plans. It is a walk-out basement, so there are lots of possibilities for you.
Outside, you will find a woodshed in front, and while it might be fun to think of this as some kind of child control device, it's just a woodshed. Down the driveway is the three-car garage that you can see is being used for any number of things right now and none of them for cars. It is a great storage location for whatever your spare life has to overflow.
There are other lakefront properties on the market now, but this one by comparison is on a larger lake with fewer residents surrounding it (85% state-owned), will cost you less in taxes, less in energy costs, and you have more usage choices - that flexibility - so what's not to like here?
And there you have it, two homes, four lots, lakefront, year round enjoyment, and all for a bargain price. The neighbors are sniffing around and may snap it up if you are asleep at the switch, so get on the phone and make your appointment now.
You've read this far, so it is very likely you are interested enough to want to get inside and see if all this can really be true. Well, it is - but you'll need to see THAT for yourself, now won't you? The sellers are represented by Jeff Long: Schedule a private showing for yourself today by calling him at 877-385-2077.
Neighboring Communities; Boulder Junction, Star Lake, Plum Lake, Trout Lake,
