6317 Japutal Highlands Rd... Probably

I hate to admit that names have any bearing on whether or not I want to live on a piece of land.  But Japutal Highlands Rd inspires me about as much as living on the hypothetical Butt Monkey Creek, or Cadaver Lane.  Actually, scratch that.  I'd probably get a kick out of living on Butt Monkey Creek.  Wait... could that name be mistaken for a slur?  I sure hope not because if we ever get to name a road ever, it's in contention!  

The day started with several hours of searching the listings.  And a great many interesting and not so interesting names have been found.  Among the more exciting are: Roadrunner Way, Squirrel Valley, and Copperopolis CA.  Among the less interesting: Mike street (seriously, Mike?  You couldn't come up with anything less self-absorbed and more creative?), Matt street (Wtf?  We're seeing a trend.), and the racist Squaw Valley.  

via GIPHY

After those hours, I had a short list of 4ish properties that were... all over the place.  But that's ok because we learned our lesson about trying to view too much in one day last time.  So, we set off for two properties on the same road in Alpine.  

We do love Jamul, but the properties there seem to be either really really expensive, or really really far away, or both.  And while we won't stop looking there because there's something about that land that feels really amazing, it doesn't make sense to eschew other areas entirely.  Alpine was not on my short list, but after viewing about a zillion other properties further away this morning, I decided Alpine wasn't really too far away.  (Also, apparently you can get 5 acres of land in Northern CA right now for about $25K.  I imagine it's all burnt to a crisp but a lot of them looked just beautiful...)

Sneakers and jeans, sun block and hat, water and dog, and we're off.  As is our way, we thought we knew how to get to interstate 8 from 67... but we didn't.  So, a brief talk with the GPS later and we were actually on our way.  The drive takes you from 8 along a jaw droppingly high curve with a beautiful view and into some really rural places where it's clear that the USPS can not be bothered to drive down all the piddly roads.

The thing about real estate websites is that many of them really want you to only ever use them as sales people (I get it... it's like looking at our store's site then going to Amazon) but for introverted people, we just want to see if the land is even a possibility before dealing with *shudder* humans. 😬  So they do things like tell you the general area but not the address.  So, the first property we took from their map and then looked for the same land features on our GPS and dropped a pin.  It was at the bottom of a street that, further up, had a property listed by address.  We turned onto the road but the one on the corner was occupied by horses.  Well it's always nice to have a horse for a neighbor, maybe the parcel was behind this one.  Nope, that was definitely also inhabited.  

I figure that the two properties were really one and the same property so we just went on to look at the "other."  It had been shown on the realtor map as at the end of this street.  A very straight street according to said map.  But actually this road was anything but straight.  Very very curvy in fact.  We decided something was not right.  Of course we'd left the address at home because it looked so simple but a cranky and disjointed lack-of-cell-reception internet search later, and we had an address.

6317 was not marked.  So, we think we found it.  It's advertised at $200K, but also as having two wells, and 3 building pads.  We found a section of crushed fence around the property and proceeded up a blissfully cemented driveway.  The first pad was easy enough to find as it was right on top of the drive way.  Maybe it wasn't as clear as you'd want, but useable.

Pad 1

It's at the top of a modest hill that's on a moderate mountain.  So at the end of this pad, it goes straight down.  As we walked through the land, some paths became apparent as did a dead stove, a dead carpet, a dead chair... sofa... a suspicious roof...  Oh shit!  Maybe this wasn't the right land!  Is someone living here?

Chris and Phoenix checking out the structure

The structure was a teensy kitchen, shower, and extra room along with the screened in portion you see on the right.  No one was home and probably hadn't been in some time but we were a bit confused and nervous.

The path led down from this structure to what could be a seasonal stream and... someone's swing.  I'm concerned that someone was disposed from land that they were making use of when this went on the market.  That's complicated.

See the blue swing?

We retreated back up the hill.  On pad 1 was clearly a well access dealy.  This is a big surprise to me because when we had a well when I was a kid, it looked like a well with a round cement lid over round cement walls.  These here look like old timey water pumps.

Phoenix and the well outlet

The acreage on this lot is a bit more than 8 so we looked down the hill to try to figure out where the land probably extends to.  We did like it.  Rocky but with plants.  Not so steep that you can't build stairs and paths to get around.  A narrow valley where Chris could potentially set up a target to practice archery.  Then we saw a cement block structure.  I don't really know what it was but we decided it would make a great landing for a deck/grill/hot tub thing.  The spot was down the hill then back up the next a bit.  We got extremely excited thinking we could build a bridge to get across!  Then we saw that there's a drive that goes from the other end of pad 1 down to that exact spot.  Foo.  We wanted a bridge.

So, we're not exactly sure where the other well might be nor where these other pads are.  Presumably one is under the structure someone was living in and left there.  Maybe the other is the odd cement block thing.  So... is it really 6317 Japutal Highlands Rd?  Ehhhh.

Here's one more look at pad 1 with a quirky cowlick of land popping up along with a water tank someone set up there.  We're trying to figure out if we can use the rocks where they are as a wall in our bedroom.

Land cowlick and a bit of the driveway