Lakeside Living in the Merrimack Valley: There are many beautiful places in New England. You don’t have to go far to find gorgeous beaches or grand mountains. Maine and Vermont can be amazing in almost any season. But with all this beauty, it’s easy to overlook what’s available in the Merrimack Valley. One example: our area’s lakes, which can provide residents with all the perks of summertime and year-round living.

Paul and Dennis Webster Greene, owners of Webster Green Antiques & Interiors in Methuen, spent many years traveling on weekends to Ogunquit, Maine, with in-laws. The couple had always talked about building a house there, but when they went on a house call for their business to a home on Forest Lake in Methuen, they realized they could have everything they wanted in a vacation home without having to make the traffic-filled trek to Maine. Paul wasn’t interested in any of the home’s antiques, but he mentioned to the owner that he would pay a million dollars for the view. Before they knew it, Paul and Dennis owned a lake house just minutes from their full-time home.

“You drive off Hampshire Road, and you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere,” Paul says. “I love just lying on the porch and hearing the rain hit the tin roof. We can zip back home at any time. I’m at the store every day, and yet when I close up, we just go there and it’s like we are on vacation, even if it’s only for the evening.”

Paul and Dennis have a pontoon boat and a canoe, and spend much of their time watching wildlife, from ducks and geese to deer and foxes. “On the hottest days,” Paul says, “you can drive down that dirt road and the temperature drops; you feel like you’re in the middle of Maine somewhere.”

Shaw and Joel Rosen bought a small house on Beaver Lake in Derry, N.H., in August 2012. The couple had considered selling their home in Haverhill and moving into a house on the lake, but instead decided to dip their toes into the water, so to speak, with a small vacation home. “When we bought it, it was almost perfect,” says Shaw, who works in residential real estate. “We didn’t do much to it except some painting and hardwood floors in the bedroom.”

The house was only 1,200 square feet, but it had just enough space to accommodate their two grown children when they visited, which was all the Rosens really needed in a vacation home. Most of their “lake living” took place outdoors, anyway. The back deck and patio looked onto the lake, where their kayaks and speedboat were docked. Sliding glass doors led directly from the kitchen, Shaw’s favorite place in the house, onto the back deck.

The Rosens loved lake living so much that they recently decided to move full time into a larger house on the same lake. Their children now live in the area, so the larger, year-round home is perfect for the family.

Chuck Raffoni and his husband, Scott Meegan, jumped right into lakeside living when they moved from Waltham to a home on Freeman Lake in North Chelmsford in 2001. “It wasn’t necessarily marketed as being on the lake,” Chuck remembers, “and when we saw it, we thought, ‘there’s water back there.’ ” They cleared the trees behind the home and ended up with a great lake view.

The appeal of lakeside living for Chuck and Scott lasts year-round. “It’s so peaceful, and it changes with the seasons,” Chuck says. “In the winter, there are people out there ice-skating and ice-fishing. In the summer, there are people sailing. The fall is a traditional New England theme with all the colors. In springtime, the lake is where you start to see nature coming back to life, the animals coming out, the buds popping.”

Chuck and Scott often swim off the dock behind their home, and they have a paddleboat and a canoe that they take out on the water. In the winter, they love to snowshoe on the ice. The neighborhood is quiet, with many full-time residents, and the road, which is functionally more of a walking trail, is a great place to take their goldendoodle, Dixie.

So if you’re thinking about buying a lake house, remember that you might not have to look far. Sometimes it’s great to pack up, hit the road, and travel several hours to a vacation spot. But for many, the convenience of vacationing close to home is priceless.