The cabin is perched on a rocky outcrop. The Erskines drive, catch a ferry, drive again and then hike up the hill to get to their family hideaway.

First there's the trek; by car from Seattle to the Anacortes ferry, by boat to San Juan Island, by car again toward the highest point on the island. And then there's the hike through the forest, in and up to the house with all the food, supplies and drinking water they will need.

On a good day it's a four-hour journey. On a not-so-good day, seven.

"One year the bees were really bad, and my wife was pregnant with our middle child and she stepped in a yellow-jacket nest," recalls Joe Erskine.

The family camped on the seven acres of land for years before deciding to build the barest of getaway homes with no running water and a wood stove for heat. Solar panels provide electricity.
 

	COURTESY OF THE TAUNTON PRESS
	The twin fire-tower design puts the Erskine family high over San Juan Island. A sleeping berth for the kids is on one side and one for the parents on the other. They have views on three sides. Below is a great room and modest kitchen.

Why, one might think Joe Erskine has lost his senses building such a place. Just the opposite. It's where he and his family rediscover them. It's where the Erskines and their three children ages 9, 11, 14 see the brightest stars, feel the wind on their faces, taste the best barbecue meals, hear the call of the nighthawks and smell the dry grasses of September.

It's where the Erskines reconnect, with nature, each other and themselves. "In the city we always worry about where the kids are because of traffic," Erskine says. "But up there they can go wherever they want." And that's just what a getaway home is all about.
 

Tucked under one of the sleeping lofts is a basic kitchen. A salvaged piece of marble serves as the countertop.

"Somebody really has to want to be there. It's the water, the view and isolation. It's the Other place with a capital 'O,' " says Dale Mulfinger, author of the new book "The Getaway Home" (The Taunton Press, $30). Mulfinger's first book is titled "The Cabin," and he chuckles as he calls himself a "cabinologist."

It was the cry of the northern Minnesota loons that hooked him as a young college student, and now Mulfinger and his wife are the owners of two cabins. He also has designed them for many a like-minded adventurer. Truly an architect with cabin fever.
 

	A picnic table is used for dining indoors and out. It can easily be carried out to the deck.

What he's looking for in a bona fide getaway place is fun, informality, joy, whimsy, self-expression, magnificent land, views and an opportunity for magical experiences. Getting there should be part of the adventure. Getaways have modest kitchens, and sleeping spaces take many forms; in living rooms, on porches and in smaller buildings on the property. Porches, decks and patios bring the outdoors in. Communal living is key.

The Erskine home is featured in Mulfinger's book as an example of bringing beauty to the basics, and for Seattle architect David Vandervort's "upside down" design to get the most from the view below. He drew up a 700-square-foot glass-and-wood structure with two towers on either side that deliberately recall National Parks Service fire towers.
 

One of Joe Erskine's fondest memories is of a magnificent meteor shower over San Juan Bay. The deck offers a perfect place for morning coffee or midnight star-gazing.

"The property struck me as the same caliber as the national parks I had been to," says Erskine. He should know. He'd been to almost all of the national parks in the Lower 48 on family trips as a child.

Vandervort calls it "the most rustic of rustics" and, with Erskine pitching in on much of the work with Friday Harbor contractor Tom Nolan, it was built for about $50,000 in 1994. That included timbers Erskine, a marine engineer, recycled from Seattle Piers 70 and 90.
 

	The 700-square-foot cabin is heated with a woodstove in the central living space. Photovoltaic energy (from solar panels) provides electricity.

The bedrooms are perched in each tower (parents on one side, kids on the other) for views on three sides. Much of the site is on a northwest-facing rock edge with Roche Harbor, the northern San Juans and Victoria, B.C., beyond.

"It's not going anywhere," Erskine says, because Vandervort tethered it to the rock with steel rebar and concrete piers able to withstand 100-mile-an-hour winds. Natural finish board and batt siding, fir windows and a metal roof protect it from wind and rain. It remains rustic throughout with fir floor decking, cedar-lined walls, two ladders for stairs, exposed post-and-beam framing and no indoor plumbing. Downstairs holds a kitchen and great room, with a picnic table.

But after 10 years, the Erskines are adding a little luxury to their rustic getaway: a bath house complete with sauna.