Lure of the Lake

A Minnesota couple settles into a dream cottage built along a sentimental shoreline.

- KELLY RYAN KEGANS

The black-stained siding of Jill and Jeff Murphy’s low-slung cottage is crisply contrasted with white trim and topped with a cedar shake roof, echoing buildings in Norway and Denmark.

Growing up, Jeff and Jill Murphy lived on opposite sides of Lake Pulaski in the small Minnesota town of Buffalo, west of the Twin Cities, but it wasn't until they were both in their youth and more than 2,000 miles away in San Diego that the pair were introduced by mutual friends.

"As kids, we were both out waterskiing all the time, and I don't know how we didn't manage to cross paths," Jill recalls. That fateful first date in California and a deep-rooted love of the lake eventually brought the couple right back to where they started. "After college, we knew we wanted to come back to Lake Pulaski to raise our kids, and we wanted to be the house that everybody comes to."

"I've always liked vintage trucks," Jeff says of their restored 1967 Land Rover. Alongside him are Jill (holding Daisy) and daughters Megan, Grace, and Sarah. Their golden retriever, Piper, is the official guest greeter.

Today, some 35 years later, the empty nesters are settling into their next stage of life in a newly built cottage about a mile down the shore from their previous family home. Inside and out, "Camp Murph" is as much about accommodating the couple's new life stage as it is about remaining the sort of place where everybody gathers, including their three grown daughters, Megan (22), Sarah (20), and Grace (18), who regularly return for weekends of wake surfing, waterskiing, hiking, and cookouts over a bonfire.