Lauren Herold Creates Unqiue Bed and Breakfast

The Stablehouse is not a typical bed and breakfast. It's not exactly designed for a romantic weekend or for guests who need to be pampered. In fact, the single room is more like a furnished two-bedroom apartment than a motel room, and owners Lauren and Keith Herold are more like friendly neighbors.

The Herolds moved east from Los Angeles about three years ago after spending two years hunting for the perfect place to retire. Lauren's sister lives in Carbondale and on numerous visits to the region, she and Keith decided this is where they wanted to retire.

"We wanted to find some land that was unlikely to be developed in our lifetime. It ended up developing her a bit more than we wanted, when the Southern Illinois Wine Trail began to really take off, but it's still what we were looking for. There's something very reassuring about getting caught behind a tractor on the road. It reminds you that you live in the country," Lauren said.

Before she moved east, Lauren was a landscape architect in Los Angeles and she frequently returns to California to work out the details of the sale of her business out there. "I was back in out old neighborhood a few weeks ago and I wondered how we ever lived there. The streets are dirty and the sidewalks are dirty. It's like living in another country. I wondered if it was always like that and I just didn't notice or if it just got a lot worse. It's only been three years, so I don't think it got that much worse," she said.

Their old home was about 8 miles from downtown L.A. and Lauren's office, a commute that took from 45 minutes to an hour and a half every day. "I learned to listen to books on tape so I didn't get stressed at the drive," she said.

That kind of traffic was one of the things the Herolds wanted to avoid in their new home. That, and dogs. "Our little block had 21 dogs on it. You couldn't walk down the street without feeling like these dogs were going to break out of their yards and attack you. We got cornered by dogs a couple times, and had to take one neighbor to court over a barking dog," Lauren said. So, they wanted a place without dogs.