Recurring Ramona

I suppose it's not really fair to say that looking at more land in Ramona is recurring, like we haven't looked at a bunch of land in Jamul.  But we prefer Jamul?  Idk.  Anyway, we went Saturday to look at more land in Ramona.  That's my point.

Like many real estate land listings, this first property didn't have an actual address.  It's listed as Ramona Highlands Rd and Hwy 78.  So, we went to that intersection.  Actually we went past that intersection on a really curvy road that, coupled with the barometric pressure from the unusual clouds, made me feel quite nauseated.  We found a place to turn around and went back to where Ramona Highlands Rd turns off.  Because the address was really unclear, I was looking up the map on my phone and talking while Chris was pulling off the road.  

Me: It just says...

*Car slowing*

Me: Ramona Highland Rd and Hwy...

*Car stops abruptly and I fly into my seatbelt*

Me: 78. BLERGH!

So, we had a good laugh about how the property was apparently on a blergh.  

At that point, it started to rain in earnest.  This is such a rare occurrence in Southern CA that we couldn't be unhappy about it.  But when we finally picked out the land from Chris's property lines app, it seemed that, like many land lots, there was no way to traverse the land to where we might actually build and without being able to do that, well, there was no point in leaving the car.

Build on a mountain?  Maybe if we hadn't needed a bridge to get over and check it out.

And truly, this land was further out than we were comfortable with.  It wasn't close to shopping or other amenities.  We just weren't into it.

Well, that was a bust.  And since we'd driven out there and the dog was unimpressed with not even getting out of the car, we looked to see if there were more properties we could look at.  We decided to look at 16341 Highland Valley Rd and another in Santee on the way home.

The drive to 16341 brought us back over curvy roads that produced a disgusting number of pre-vomitous burps from me.  And then went over a road so curvy and twisty, that it couldn't be nauseating because you had to go so slowly to complete the turns.  Seriously, like 15mph (that's 24kph for you European folks).  

Doesn't look that impressive on the map.  Humph.

Again, we drove past the land and had to find a place to turn around.  We pulled off onto a drive that seemed like it was probably for this land.  There was a chain across it so we got out to walk.

Ooo, palm trees!

As I've said before, the issue with looking at land is often that you can't traverse it.  There are no paths, the underbrush is way too brushy to make your way through, and the terrain might look flat enough but the brush hides major drop offs and valleys that you could easily break yourself falling from.  This isn't an issue with this land.  Satellite told us that actually there are quite a few paths through this land.  In fact, the way the paths cut through the slope makes it rather like a fancy tiered cake, or the Gardens of Babylon.

See all the paths on that Hartmen Family Trust?

As we walked in, we found a dead grapefruit on the ground.  Chris said it was sweet that someone was trying to feed us.

We were really excited to see what looks like a seasonal stream at the base of the property along the road.

See how the land drops off beyond those stick-y plants?

The path was really more of a packed earth road that had clearly seen tires over its life.  As we walked down this extremely traversable way, we started to notice a regularity to the trees.  They're placed almost in lines and ... they seemed to be all of a kind.

The fact that there were trees at all was sort of a thing.  Like, sometimes there are "trees" on the land we see, but they're really just large bushes.  Or tall leggy plants, sort of like sumac is in the northeast.  We also saw some piping and wondered if there was a well on this land, but as we kept walking, we realized it was more an irrigation system.  We started to wonder if this land was formerly an orchard.  We got more clues as we walked on.

Can you tell what it is?

Yeah, so... all those trees?  Avocado trees!  As we walked on, we saw trees with avocados hanging like little green jewels dripping from the branches.

Not ripe yet

The paths zigzag up the slope of this property.  As we made our way up, we saw that one of the neighbors has a castle. 

We were really excited about the prospect of living with so many trees, and fruit bearing trees at that, though we don't particularly want to tend an orchard.  What will we do with 400 avocado trees?  But we still hadn't seen anyplace to actually clear to build a home.  There was one section of path that the satellite seemed to say wasn't connected to any of the others.  We scaled this extreme hill to get to it.  (Turns out it is connected but we didn't see it on the satellite view.)

The person holding the leash has to go first.  Gets squirrely otherwise

The path we reached was actually much better than even those below.  We were concerned that it might have been some other land parcel, but no, the land plot app said it was the same parcel.  It turned around some corners and... there was a pad all freshly made for a home!  It faces southeast instead of south, so we'd have to build at an angle to it, but... it's big enough and seems that possibly there's even a way onto it that doesn't switchback all through the orchard.  There's a gorgeous view to the north.  Which would be behind the house, but hey, we want a deck anyway.

Yeah, there was totally a rainbow

While we checked out the flatish area where we thought we might could build a deck, the dog discovered a stick he loved.

You can see the pad up the hill a bit

We tried to figure out where we could put a guest house as we made our way back down and checked out some of the odder end bits of path.  On the way, I plucked a ripe avocado from a tree, peeled it and ate it, despite Chris's misgivings.  Are there dangerous things that look like avocados?  Mushrooms yes... but avocados?  You may know that my body has trouble with many foods, and fruit has been a real issue this past year.  Avocados are slightly problematic for me, but this one didn't seem to trigger the ow-y mouth response.  So, yay!

As we neared the car, we saw that the trees changed just a bit.  I went to check it out.

Yeah, so that's an apple tree, a grapefruit tree, and an orange tree!  It seems like maybe there might be different kinds of oranges too, like maybe mandarin and also maybe some lemon or lime?  I took an orange that was ripe.  I haven't eaten it yet but under the pretense that the avocado didn't kill me, I'm hoping maybe the orange doesn't either.  I have trouble with all three of these fruits, but maybe... just maybe if the trouble is related to how it's grown, I can avoid it?  I don't know.  It's the one thing that makes the idea of living on the former orchard sad; that I might not be able to eat any of it.

The dog was very pleased with this outing so he slept on the drive back to Santee. We've been up the road this property is listed on before. It's not the greatest, but it is paved. Again, this property had no address listed. It just said on the corner of Summit Ave and Summit Crest Dr. When we got there... there's already a home at that corner. I have a suspicion that the map the real estate company is using is inaccurate.

Chris stopped the car just before we started climbing a really steep part of the road so we could confer with various maps. Seeing a big vehicle come up behind us, he swore, and tried to pull off so the other people could get past. That's when we heard a big Buh-WHUMP! We pulled temporarily into the drive of the home there. Smelling an odd though pleasant enough smell, we got out and looked under the car. It didn't seem to be leaking and nothing appeared to be hanging.

There was a real estate sign up the hill a ways. So we went to check it out but there was no where to pull off. Chris declined to put the car over the side of the road onto the wet sandy dirt. It was quite a bump. So, we pulled into the private property there, got out of the car and took a quick walk through some land right on the side of a hill.

It's not cleared but flat enough in two places to pretty easily build a double story home. It was raining by then and the people who lived on the private property returned, so we scurried back to the car and took off.

We really don't want to continue to live in Santee, the nickname of which is Klan-tee. The view from this property is... meh. However, the commute for Chris to work would be just fine -pretty much the same as now. And we have many stores close at hand. We wouldn't even have to find new stores to go to since we already know what's here. So, when I emailed Adam later in the evening to ask him about the orchard property, I asked him to see if we were looking at the correct property here or not. We're entirely unsure if this is the property we meant to look at.

On the short drive back to the apartment, the brakes made a weird whirring noise and the car felt... different. I put in a call to our mechanic today. Did we mention that we might need a different car if we live so far out? *sigh*