2365 White Wing Dr and Escondido Double Defeat

We've been meaning to check into lands in Escondido for a while.  We're not avoiding it; it's simply that it's in the opposite direction of most of the land we've been looking at, so it's usually inconvenient.  It's also not a super commute to work for Chris.  But this listing on Old Guejito Grade Rd was 10 acres for $87.5K.  How could we not look?

This past week has been... one of those weeks.  There was a blessedly brief trip to the dentist that has left a far less brief pain in my mouth every time I eat.  There were missed socially distant plans for which I had feels.  There was messed up sleep and then too much sleep.  Dead brain, then massively anxious (and ow-y) body.  And through it all, the dog and I have been having small bathroom battles.

Ever since he peed in the car, we've been quite keen to get him out to pee whenever it looks like he might be thinking about the possibility of possibly urinating sometime in the next millenia.  That said, I also don't love it when he waits until Chris leaves for work in the morning, then promptly wakes me up because he has to pee.  Once this week we walked out to see that Chris hadn't even quite finished getting his cycle gear on before pulling out of the complex.

So, when we took off Saturday, we got to the bottom of the stairs whereupon I took a page out of the dog's book, grabbed the keys and went back upstairs to pee.  Yeah, I'd just gone 10 minutes earlier, but I had to go again.  Caffeine.  I'd just had a cup of black tea.

The drive to Escondido is between 40-50 minutes depending on where you're going there.  I was surprised when we got off the highway and the GPS claimed we still had 27 minutes to go.  Isn't everywhere along a highway these days?  

I found myself apologizing to Chris, as I sometimes need to do, for my stanky presence.  I have this issue which is that I'm allergic to most deodorants.  There is one that works and I am not allergic to.  And every few months my bacteria get clever and decide they can handle the deodorant.  So I'm stinky again and have to start a new round of searching for a deodorant that works and won't make me unable to lower my arms for a week.  This time I achieved the arm ease but not the smell abatement.  *sigh*

And then we smelled a smell that I really didn't think I'd created.  We turned (me: a lot; Chris -who was driving: only a little) to look questioningly at the dog.

Me: I didn't make that smell.  I think the dog needs to go.  

Chris: At least he's still laying down.

*Dog gets up immediately*

Me: Famous last words.

There wasn't a place to pull over so we hoped the dog was going to be ok and drove deeper into a town I find just a little odd.  Escondido seems to have money and then... does not have money.  The downtown lacks the charm of personality.  They've exchanged it for the charm (read: affluent look) of uniformity.  Most buildings are all done in the same modified Spanish-style white-ish adobe, with sun bleached, red, curved, ceramic roof tiles. Plenty of big franchise businesses and corporations live there like all manner of different people: grammas, conjoined twins, a hermit, 4 year olds with glasses, your neighbor Chuck, the inhabitants of the college party flat from down the street... all maneuvered into the same ill fitting clothing, but it fits them all badly in different ways.

If the town architecture doesn't reflect diversity, the population probably does.  But those I saw looked pretty similar: down on their luck.  One young boy punched in a frustrated manner at a speed bag on his porch where the white washed wood was crumbling.  A dead eyed woman walked, dragging her slippered feet, sipping from a straw in a large pop drink.

There are rich parts of Escondido.  I was once at a party in Escondido at a home that I gasped when I entered because it was so opulent.  I don't want to paint a picture that the town is especially different than other towns in the U.S.  It's simply that poverty (of the wallet or the soul) seems at home in some areas.  Like, sadly, the world has accepted its existence and folds in those who have been feeling stretched so long that they no longer struggle.  Like a hug that you give your weird baby brother, Sidney, whom you accept and even love but with whom you will never see eye to eye on matters politic.  But Escondido almost feels to me like it has accepted nothing and indeed, averts its eyes to avoid having to admit that not all buildings should be white-ish adobe with sun bleached red curved ceramic roof tiles.

Around now, Chris let it slip that he was going to have to consult the GPS in a bit for more definite location.  I quietly acknowledged that I may be done going in search of land that has no address nor a pinned map location that makes any sense, but he may not.  Oh well.  As long as he deals with the annoyance instead of me...  But he did then let slip that we were going to go past a Lake.  It was so very exciting to have land to look at near a Lake, that I forgot my annoyance.

And then the smell returned.  We looked at each other.  We looked at the dog.

Me: Well, at least he's not whining yet.

*Dog starts to whine immediately*

Chris: Famous last words.

So, we found a place to pull over just before the lake.  It seemed that perhaps he didn't really need to go but it's always good to never have pee in your car.  I wished at that time that I could go as easily on the side of the road.  I needed to relieve myself again.

Then we went past Lake Wohlford, which is big and awesome

We pulled onto Guejito Rd to consult the GPS.   We found ourselves stopped right at the entrance to:

Ok, so... we knew now that we shouldn't necessarily expect this land to be silent.  But... at least we'd have easy access to the range if we wanted to practice shooting.  

The Zillow ad combined with the now local info we could get on Chris's parcel lines app suggested we needed to go on the other side of the Lake actually.  Well... twist my arm!

We drove back along the Lake, then turned around its end.  The Lake from this side was less easy to see...

...but what beautiful trees there were!  We went along this road until we were prompted to ease off onto a dirt road.  This pricked Chris's spidey senses and a good thing too because, while the road itself was pretty much fine, it had these enormous heaves, as if culverts were pressing up from below the road.  I'm not entirely sure our car would have made it over at a different speed.  We might have just gotten stuck in the middle like a see-saw!

It started out innocently enough

We went along some rather exciting curves.  In fact, this whole drive from Lake Wohlford Rd to Oakvale Rd was just smack full of hilly ripples, darting into the folds of each mountain, then hugging its curve as you stare wide-eyed out onto the valley where you could meet your death.  I rather enjoyed it.  It was not as puke-a-torious as Lose-My-Lunch Lane, though there was a moment or two.

And then we reached the end of the line.

No getting through this

While the land for sale was listed as... at least on the other side of this land and possibly a bit beyond that even, the road went past this land somewhat.  We drove up that way to see if we could glimpse the possibility of the land that was for sale.

The fence kept us from any glimpses but there was this very nice hill

With resignation, we drove back to the place where the gate was and pulled over.  

Chris: Well, what do you want to do?

Me: I dunno.  You want to go to Jamul and look at that other parcel you found?

Chris: Yeah.  I guess.  It's pretty far away.

Me: This is what I want.  You take the doggy out.  Then we get french fries.  I use the bathroom. Then we go see the other land.

Chris: Ok.

Chris took the dog out who immediately popped a squat.  Why he couldn't do this 20 minutes earlier when he was out peeing...?  Whatever.

You may not understand the above exchange in all its nuance.  It's true that neither Chris nor I had had lunch at this point.  But the bigger issue is that I haven't had a potato, fry or not, in over a year.  Last October I did an elimination diet trying to figure out what the heck I can eat because I was having so many digestive issues.  The diet results were supposed to be easy to read but they were not, leaving me with many questions and also avoiding many foods for the past year.  I finally was able to get a Food Intolerance Test so now I know, I can eat potatoes!  I'm also now a pescatarian and can't eat cane sugar, but hey, at least I know!

This was to be my first potato in that long and, once I'd determined which fast food fries were also vegetarian, off we went.  (Yes, the doctor said I should wait three months before embarking back on foods I'd previously reacted to, but... I'm not.)  

In a white-ish, reddish roofed Jack-in-the-Box, I ordered a large curly fries.  I also asked if their bathroom was really, truly, out of order.  I mean, they have to have somewhere for their employees to go, right?  I can understand them not wanting me to get my covid in their toilet, but... I also really had to pee.  

It was really closed.  Moo.  I saved the napkins from the fries to use in the wilds of Jamul.

Bliss in a box

The drive to Jamul from Escondido took one hour and forty minutes.  I will forever be surprised that two suburbs of San Diego can be so dang far apart.  There's not really a direct way between the two.  You have to go on highways that make nearly a right angle between them, so the shortest distance between two points is actually not possible in this circumstance.

I asked Chris about this property as we drove.  2365 White Wing Dr.  2.5 acres for $150K.  That seems like a lot of money for a small plot.  We fervently hoped that it meant it had all the trimmings: a pad, a well, a water tank, a driveway, and mashed potatoes with gravy.  

We discussed dinner along the way.  We've always been great fans of eating out.  It's our main entertainment, but also, Chris hates cooking so it tends to fall to me, and I sometimes have no energy.  I said that I have stuff to make for dinner, but the kitchen was currently resembling the site of a food malpractice suit.  So, Chris suggested we get take out.  But where?

Chris: Chinese!

Me: I know, but I still have to figure out if their white sauce* has a broth base.

Chris: Maybe it is fish broth.

Me: Unlikely.

Chris: It could be duck broth...

Me: 

You do know that ducks are land animals.  And I'm not supposed to eat land animals anymore... right?

Chris: Well... they dive in the water... so they're like fish.  Ducks are fish!

*The local Chinese food place has gluten free foods available only in white sauce, and I do still have to be gluten free.

We drove down 94 and passed the turn off we always take onto Lyons Valley Rd.  Oooo, I'd never been down this way before!  I saw the Jamul Casino (woo), and a lot of really flat agricultural land between many hills.  We were just getting to the point where we'd driven 5 minutes without seeing a single home and were getting our hopes up that this plot would be blissfully neighbor-free when we turned onto Honey Springs Rd and up popped first one farm house.  Then another.  Then there were several, in a row.  By the time we turned onto White Wing Dr we were in the middle of a veritable neighborhood. 

We got there just as the sun was setting.  There is a driveway to 2365.  Chris decided part way up that if there wasn't a turn around further along, he'd be a very displeased guppy, so we abandoned the car.  We trudged up the steep slope that had usefully had 5ish years worth of plants whacked down, though not removed, upon it.

This land is very pretty.  I really like it a lot.  It has trees, and little grassy bits.  It's sloped but not in a way that some stairs couldn't make it perfectly traversable.   There is even a bit of a clearing and separate drive at the bottom of the hill where you could put a deck, or a guest house, or a home for fiscally disadvantaged woodchucks.  

But where would our home go?  The driveway leveled out where I took the picture above and, as we approached a fence indicating the end of the property, it seemed like this land might be another case of "build in the middle of the street/driveway."  But at the last possible second, the drive took a sharp turn and... there was a pad.

But... was it on this property?  Because, unfortunately, if I just angled my camera slightly to the right...

So... if this is on the property that's for sale, we're just supposed to build our home right in front of the neighbors?  And if it's the neighbor's property... where would we build our home?  You'd think that in 2.5 acres you'd find a place, but honestly, it was a good slope and we'd be so far down in a hole there, I don't know that we'd get the sun we'd need for thermal mass!

At the edge of the pad was this lovely water tank and a tetanus inducing shipping container.

Great if they'd be ours...

I decided I could probably make it home without peeing in the wild.  We spent part of that drive home trying to weigh the pros and cons of this property.  Lovely land, good roads leading up to it, formations of a driveway, maybe a pad, maybe a water tank, maybe a storage dealy, maybe a spot to build a guest space.  But... really close neighbors (that house wasn't the only one), not a great view, small building area even if the pad would be ours, really far out of town, little privacy.  We deducted a guess for how much that water tank would be and how much we'd save if that pad is part of the property as well as the rudimentary driveway.  From $150K, we deduced that we could be spending as little as $105K on the land itself.  Was it worth that much with all the things we don't like about it? 

No.  :(

We dragged our butts home to some seriously ticked off cats.  It was way past everyone's dinner hour.  

Sunday, today, was supposed to be our relaxation day.  Because we'd looked at both properties yesterday, today we wanted to go to... The ZOO!

An aside, we are concerned about animals and Zoos and how some Zoos have a core value of capitalism rather than animal welfare.  It has seemed to us that the San Diego Zoo at least does give a crap about animal welfare as they do a lot of conservation work.  Very recently most of their work was in Australia after the terrible fires they had.  We buy a membership to the Zoo because we <3 aminals (that's not misspelled, that's how I say it in Kate Talk) and we want the Zoo to do good things for aminals that we can not do.  The fact that we can go to the Zoo all year and not pay the exorbitant admission prices also helps.

The San Diego Zoo isn't actually just one place and where we wanted to go today was the Safari Park.  Safari's be damned; we go there because they have exhibits where you can get up close and personal with the animals.  Our favorite?  Petting the kangaroos and wallabies.  So today, we wanted to relax with the hopeful excitement that a wallaby would grant us the grace to touch it.  Even land hunters need a day off once in a while.

Chris (flexing his spread fingers against each other): "WALLABIESSS!!  WALLABIES, WALLABIES, Wallabies, wallabywallabywallaBIES!

... Which is weird because they're not anything like bees.  They should be walla-hops.  Or walla-roos.  Wait, no... they're nothing like walruses either."

We left our mightily disappointed mutt at home and drove out the the Safari Park.  Which is in Escondido.  40 minutes later, we did a U-y in the drive of the very closed Safari Park.  Yeah, sure, we should have checked.  And we both thought independently that we should check before we left, but they'd made such a big deal out of being open a few months ago... we just thought... or didn't think... 

Anyway, we drove the 40 minutes home and took the dog to the local lakes instead.  He was much more into that.

We saw pelicans

And duckies

And duckies doing headstands

Chris used this opportunity to reaffirm that ducks are fish.  Especially when a very small duck dived completely under the water only to appear some harrowing moments later in a very different place above.

So, this was our weekend.  Our thoughts continue to come back to the property on Beaver Hollow Rd, as shitty as the road is.  I wrote Adam this past week asking him how to look up if roads are slated for improvement in the next years.  He helpfully got back to me with links that made it sound like indeed, Beaver Hollow Rd would be worked upon!  Except I looked at the maps for road improvement and Beaver Hollow Rd was nowhere listed as getting any improvement at all for the years that plan spanned.  Skyline Truck Trail is scheduled for resurfacing though, which surprises me.  That road is good enough that the speed limit is 45 or 50mph and there's no thought of up-chucking along it.

I spoke with a friend recently about what flatbed trucks need in order to get stuff to a land as remote and crappy as Beaver Hollow.  What he said was encouraging, but would require stuff like going there, taking pictures, measuring the road width, and then finding a trucking company that we might use to deliver stuff to us.  

I rather fail to see, as I put it to Chris this weekend, why we can not find land that is away from all the things but not away from everything.