Love at First Sight

We had only been seeing each other so far online. It had been a tough long distance relationship over the past few months. I’ve been imagining how our first meeting would be. Would I be disappointed? Would it be exactly what I was expecting? Well the time finally came for us to meet. It was a long drive to get there. About 12 hours and 10 renditions of 1000 bottles of beer on the wall and then we were finally ready to meet.

At first we were both nervous. I brought two rowdy boys. There was a bit more slopage than I was expecting. But then, after a minute, we both warmed up and we were home.

Land Ho!

The kids instantly wanted to check out the creek, so that’s what we did. The land definitely slopes down towards the creek and then a steep (maybe 20 foot) slope to the bottom. There are some natural paths that the deer must take all the time so it was pretty easy to walk down. We’ll definitely make a stepped path down the slope. It’s already all planned out in my head. It’s gorgeous.

Instantly, there was critter catchage happening starting with a frog! It was actually pretty cute. But nope, didn’t touch it.

We crossed over the creek and made our way up to the backside of the property – an area that we won’t be able to build on unless we add a well and septic as well as run power too. But the views were awesome and the land was actually really flat once we got through the weeds of blackberry bushes.

There was a ton of evidence of critters on this side as well (feathers and poop galore) so we figure that the land has been a happy camping ground for a bunch of animals. It’ll be “interesting” to find out what. We explored for a while and even found an apple tree among the many many blackberry bushes. There might be some raspberry bushes somewhere out there too.

We made our way back to the creek. This is a shot of the boys back down in the creek and me still up top on the backside. You can see how deep the creek goes down (no way in hell that this will ever flood the house).

And this is looking up the creek – we think it starts a couple of properties over.

The Digs

On the way back to the front of the property, we found quite a bit more…a field mouse, a snake (!), lots more poop, and some animal bones (we hope). Matthew also found a horse shoe and a rusted old machete which he had fun trying to cut down the weeds with. Then we checked out the mobile home and well house. The mobile home isn’t worth more than the $100 we technically paid for it. Weirdly it had some new light fixtures in the two rooms. The bathroom was just gross. The kitchen had a really old oven (on a table) and equally old fridge. I think the most value is the brand new wood beam holding up the ceiling.

Now the well house, on the other hand, shows promise. It looks like the previous owner had been fixing it up with new drywall, flooring and a complete bathroom. It also looked like he was planning to expand beyond that as he’d leveled out the dirt behind. If we were able to finish the siding, we could easily camp out in there for a few days. I’m not sure we’d be able to keep the structure though as it’s probably not permitted. I’m sure we’ll have to tear it down when we start building the house. And, if that’s the case, it’s not worth putting money into to finish it up.

You’ve Got Mail

Well apparently we need to stop the mail. Although it was all junk mail so that’s a good thing.

We ended up going into town and buying locks to change on the well house before the rain started. RAIN! This was all just on day 1 and we still had another complete day to explore. Stay tuned for more!