Karey and Howie deGraaf:

 

Howie and I have kind of a fun background story. We were childhood sweethearts in high school growing up in Duncan here on Vancouver Island. In university we went our separate ways and I ended up moving to California. While there I got married, raised a family of three and went into business with my first husband for twenty-six years. Howie also married and had five kids of his own.

 

When my kids were grown I chose to start a new life and move back to Canada. I reconnected with Howie thirteen years ago who was also on his own and we have been together since, married and enjoying our grown children and grandchildren!

 

While I lived in California in a little coastal town called Fort Bragg we had a house with a small grandmother cottage that was perfect for a vacation rental. We renovated it, started to rent it by the night and found it was a lot of fun! We had people come to us from all over the world and they always had interesting stories to share. 

 

One of my favorite experiences was a weekend when my cousin and her husband were visiting for one night. They were planning to go camping for a week and thought they would test out their tent in our back yard for the night. At the same time I had an interesting surfer "dude" who wanted to rent our cottage for the weekend. Each conversation with him on the phone started with "Hey dude!". He booked for three people and then over three more calls kept adding people. The cottage slept four so we agreed the other people would bring sleeping bags and sleep on the floor or on the deck. When the weekend came and our surfer dude and company and my cousin showed up everything went really well. As the young fellow and friends were leaving he said,"Hey dude, you guys are so cool to let us all stay here, you even rent out your lawn!" We had a good laugh.

 

I really enjoyed hosting people on our property in California so my husband, Howie and I thought this would be a great way to work into our retirement years. Howie and I are finding having a bed and breakfast as satisfying and fun and as we hoped it would be!

 

We look forward to meeting you and helping to create a vacation worth remembering!

 

Warm regards;

Karey and Howie deGraaf