The Mermaid Cottage

January 17, 2021

Many of the unique vacation rentals we choose to stay in aren’t just a place to rest our heads for the night. They’re a test. They’re a genuine evaluation of exactly what sort of non-traditional dwelling we could reasonably afford, which of them would help us build our financial future, and could we (maintaining our sanity) actually live in it for an extended period of time?

After staying at Mike and KimAnna’s Mermaid Cottage in Del Norte, Colorado, we’ve found an entirely new off-grid muse. 

The Mermaid Cottage has been visited and reviewed by hundreds of guests, photographed, written about, and featured in several publications. Built for a mere $5,000 by the couple in 2009 and kicked-off amid a cordwood building seminar by Rob and Jaki Roy, rural New York-based cordwood masons who educate others about the practice, the project took Mike and KimAnna about 10 months to complete. Sharing similarities with traditional Earthship construction, cordwood structures incorporate recycled materials. Light filters through tinted glass bottles, vases, jars, garden spheres, warming the structure with glowing, color-rich orbs. 

It also happens to be one of Colorado’s Most Unique Vacation Rentals.

Photographs and text by Elaine Skylar Neal / Travels and Curiosities

Nestled into the base of Summer Coon Volcano on the western edge of the San Luis Valley, this isn’t the only curious project underway for the two creators. A vintage trailer accommodates guests and visiting friends. Shipping containers are used for storage. Two grow domes house organic produce and a koi pond. An old boat is being reconfigured into a potential future rental space. There’s a “man cave” built into the hillside that serves as a solar and cistern nerve center. There’s an octagonal building that is KimAnna’s art studio. The main house is a straw-bale addition built around the core of an old cabin. The remnants of another cabin sits, waiting to be repurposed. 

“You have to be willing to ask stupid questions like, ‘Can I have that?’ ” Mike says of the off-kilter log structure he hauled here on a trailer. 

We’re pretty willing to ask questions, regardless of how they’re perceived, and Mike respectfully obliged every one of them during a tour of the property. It turns out we aren’t the only ones. Of the steady influx of travelers who come to stay at the Mermaid Cottage, about 50% of them appear interested in building something of their own.

Want to build a cordwood home?

That’s our very own, Vincent Neal, co-founder of Travels and Curiosities, learning the art of cordwood masonry during a workshop at Earthwood Building School in West Chazy, New York in July of 2020. Located near the Adirondacks, the couple who leads these cordwood building workshops are the same pair that helped build The Mermaid Cottage.

Rob and Jaki Roy have two lifetimes’ worth of experience in every aspect of cordwood masonry and have built cordwood homes, taught lectures, and consulted on projects across the world.

Cordwood masonry is a very sustainable and cost-efficient way to build a home. Building a home mortgage-free can definitely be done, especially if you’re willing to start small. Like any practice, it’s best learned by doing, and there are many options for doing just that at their spring and summer workshops.

UNIQUE COLORADO destinations