The Invisitable Lands

 Yesterday was the day of thwart.  We started out well enough after Chris got home from work.  We plotted a route to see five properties, gathered up the excited dog, a bottle of water, and let the GPS take us.

One of the main problems in buying rural land seems to be the lack of roads to said land.  It might be for sale, but can you get to it to see it?  The second problem is the undergrowth.  Many of these plots are not cleared, which really just means wading through chest-high bushes but can also sometimes mean major drop offs that are concealed by those bushes.  And those can not be traversed.

First on our list: 15944 Skyline Truck Trail.  We've looked over this street before.  It's relatively close to the town center of Jamul but still has amazing views.  Once the GPS said we were just about there, I looked hopefully for a road to turn onto.  Having found one, we drove until we found a spot to pull off and saw that the land in question was up a really steep hill with lots of undergrowth.  Doggedly, we started up the hill.

This is a little more than half way up the hill.  It was around this point that Chris said he didn't think we should continue.  It's a good thing he did because it turns out this property actually has its own driveway that we just hadn't seen!  It was here that we turned around and, because of the loose dirt and slope, fell on our asses. 

When we did find the driveway, the going was much better.  The drive itself is dirt and has rocks poking out of it and shows the signs of major water run off.  In other words, it needs some major maintenance, but the signs of water run off are good since we want to collect rain water.

At the top, there are two cleared pads.  Sadly, neither of them completely face true south.  We have to build the home facing true south to get enough light to warm the home, but potentially, with a bull dozer and backhoe, we could make enough space for it all to work the way we want.  The view true south from this property is really nice as well as the view the other direction.  We really liked this property.  Sadly, it's almost $200K.

Here are some pictures of the pads and the view.

  

Site #2 was way over on the boarder of the Cleveland National Forrest.  I admit that when I hear the word "forrest" I think of trees.  This is not necessarily the case with Cleveland National Forrest.  The route took us variously over dirt road, paved road, asked us to go on a road that no longer exists.  In some cases there would be a few hundred feet of pavement, then dirt, then a few hundred of pavement.  The dirt roads were suffering from washboarding and the paved roads suffered from pot holes the size of which could swallow most vehicle tires, so the speed limit I guessed to be about 15-20mph.  Which was just about the speed at which you wouldn't kill your shocks or make your orthodontist rich.  

The land there was largely burned up from the recent fires.  We did go through some just gorgeous trees, the kind that make a tunnel of the road, that were probably still alive, but the land of the plot itself was dust and ash.  It was so difficult to get there that we felt unless the land was very very inexpensive... we just couldn't.  

Avoiding the route back that didn't exist, and another road that didn't exist, we were onto site #3.  It's surprising how many sites require you to drive on land that's marked NO TRESPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY up the wazoo, and this one was just that.  But because Chris was already doubtful about the route (on the GPS it looked like a game of pick up sticks), we didn't chance it.  

Somewhere on the way to this property we'd decided it would be the last one, but since it was unavailable, we decided to go on.  We went further out into the wilds, over some relatively good roads only to be abruptly and jarringly deposited onto less good roads.  We went until the GPS asked us to mount this:

 I realize it doesn't look like that much from the picture, but it's very steep and that paved part isn't as wide as the car.  In fact, the whole path is about as wide as the car.  We said "no." 

We tried to wrangle the GPS into just bringing us to the next site, but it decided we wanted to go to this site by a different route.  When we got to the top of a hill about as narrow as this one and the way down the other side seriously looked like the view at the crest of a roller coaster, we realized the mistake and turned around.

Thus shamed, the GPS took us to the last site, we drove and drove and drove.  We were still in Jamul.  Apparently it's huge.  We went past a home that had been built with ramparts and battlements (I believe they and a large hedge hid a human sized chess game), one that had been built as a geodesic dome and parked ourselves just beyond the ubiquitous "No Trespassing" sign.  Some locals driving RC cars confirmed that land was for sale at the end of the road we were supposed to not trespass.  I asked mostly as a show of goodwill for indeed trespassing.

The land was on a low, wide hill and was beautiful.  Not much clearing done but enough so that you could walk and get a sense of where the flat portions were.  And it was quiet!  Like, back country camping quiet.  Chris and Phoenix made a serious evaluation of a bush.

Around this time, Chris and I both got this text: 

Welcome to Mexico.  As talk, text and data is included in your domestic plan you'll have no additional charges while roaming.  High speed data is up to 0.5 GB/day.  If you need help visit www.vzw.com/intltrvl or call +1 908.559.4899.  Enjoy your trip.

I would like to point out, we weren't in Mexico.  But that's how far we'd traveled.

The view wasn't much, it was super far out, there was no well and no really useful driveway so at $150K we decided to pass up 10 Bee Valley Rd.  But we did think it was nice land.  And blissfully quiet.

Thoroughly hungry and having gone through our one bottle of water about an hour prior, we asked the GPS to take us home.  

"Oh," says Chris reading the GPS directions.  "It looks like there's another roadway if we just continue up here past the property for sale.  Maybe we'll get to look at more of the land."

We did get to look at more of the land.  We got to look at some of it very closely as we twisted and prodded and maneuvered our stuck car out of an utterly impassable drive studded with deceptively high pointy rocks and wash out holes large enough to... well, get the car stuck!

We saw that the road was rough.  But it started out ok and then... well, we made it over the first heinous rock... and then, well, we were facing downhill, surely it would be easier to let the car roll rather than try to back up over that awful rock again?  Until Chris got out of the car, jogged to the end of the street, decided we both couldn't make the rest of the roadway and the gate to the main road was shut and locked on the other end.  Fuck.

So, with no where to turn around, reverse was engaged.  The dog nearly shit himself with all the rollicking and there are several bushes that both got a massive side trim and found new residence in and on our car.  I did the first half of the way with Chris behind guiding.  He did the second half, over the heinous rock.  Were it not for our different ways of telling each other how to steer (him telling me which way to turn the wheel and me telling him which way the back of the car needed to go), it might have gotten done faster.  But after maybe 20 minutes, we'd backed up the few hundred feet we'd gone turned around and headed back the way we'd originally come.  FU GPS.

  

A mightily stuck car with a scared dog in the back.  I realize it doesn't look like much but the troughs on either side of the road are deep enough to make a tire not reach ground and they were just the width of our car.  We got stuck a few times.  Also, evil rocks with scrapes.

We stopped on the way back to walk the jitters out of the dog hoping he'd poop outside the car (it really did smell like he'd gone a bit) and commune with some horses for us.  The dog did not poop.  He didn't even pee.  He seemed to have decided that this land was not ours and he would hardly be convinced to mark it for all the treats in the bag we keep for him.

This horse liked me and not Chris for some reason.  The other one was nice to us both (it lipped my fingers) but I forgot to get a picture of the other.

We rolled into our parking spot 5+ hours after we'd left communicating largely in grunts and carefully clipped sentences.  It was two and a half hours past dinner time for the animals.  The cats were pissed.