Tree Houses Not Just For Kids

(CBS)  You could say Joyce and Richard LaVoie like to get high.

The tree house they built in the Minnesota woods has just one room with a potbelly stove to warm it. As CBS News Correspondent Bob McNamara reports, it is a rustic handmade hideaway.

"Often times we're so busy that you just don't value your simple things in life," says Joyce LaVoie. "I love watching the birds."

Today there is a housing boom in life aloft.

One North Dakota tree house is being built for a computer software executive.

"In these crazy times our clients have sort of turned to their backyard a little bit and decided they want to stay right at home," says tree house designer Pete Nelson.

But tree houses don't have to be deep in the woods or the wilderness. They can be as close as just around the corner, like five-story one in suburban Minneapolis.

Seventeen years ago, Mark Tucker built a sprawling tree house complex for his children from tons of lumber and thousands of hours of labor.

From his financial planner's branch office, Tucker has tourists look him up on summer days.

"At your eye level, you're about 55 feet off the ground,'' says Tucker.

From dreams born of this, came the tree house Will and Peggy Line live in year round, where the curious come to see the working kitchen, climb the ladder to the bedroom loft and marvel at the home, crafted of driftwood, scraps of maple, oak and a kid's imagination.

"It was maybe the excitement, the adventure of being 12 and building this tree house that you always wanted to have when you were 12," says Peggy Line.

They are "in-tree-ging" retreats that their owners believe brings them back down to earth.