Ya' Can't Get There From Here!

Today is Chris's birthday (his 50th!) and because his birthday means so little to him, we spent it mostly looking at land.  On the list today were the two properties left on our short list of tax sale auction potentials.  After a false start where I'd failed to actually bring the GPS coordinates with us nor did I email them to anyone, off we went to Descanso.

We haven't been to Descanso before and it is beautiful!  It also reads as maybe quite conservative, but hey, we can be conservative about some things.  Like, I've never dyed my hair any color other than blue (until the recent orange, but that was a natural-ish color).  

The drive took us pretty far out into the wilds.  We knew there would be some kind of dirt road involved from Google Maps Satellite view but there was no telling what the state of them would be.  The GPS merrily took us off to find this rectangular 9 acres and the dirt... wasn't too bad. 

And then...

We hit a gate, because of course

But never fear!  The GPS said there was another way!  So we did roughly a 32 point turn in the middle of this and went on.

We didn't get far down the next road.  It was around here that my phone died, which was confusing.  It's true that it's been dying around 50% battery for some time, but it wasn't even slightly discharged at this point.  I turned it back on and it seemed ok.

At least it was paved...

This was an easy turn around with a bit of backing up and an empty spot to the left.  Happily the GPS said there was yet another way.  Now this road seemed promising.  It was deeply rutted in some areas, but I just kept the car in 1st and only scraped the undercarriage once... or twice.

And just when we were at the end...

There were many signs about not trespassing and it was right in front of someone's home.  And honestly, that gate was serious.  Like, maybe we could have gone around, but it would have been painful.  Sadly, this was a bit in a valley and the land we needed to look at was beyond this and couldn't be seen.

Chris said he felt there was another road that lead most of the way to the plot.  So, we did another 32 point turn and headed back.  The new road was worse than the one before it.  We'd definitely need a taller vehicle to live with roads like these.  And they were fairly long roads, that we assume belong to the few homes out that way, so we couldn't just have them paved.  We were feeling pretty good about our road decisions until...

Definitely no calling the guardhouse for this

There were 5 or so locks on this gate and many signs.  We could have gone around one end if we wanted to pull prickles out of our socks for the day, but it was still quite a hike to the land, and as luck would have it, this road was high enough that we could make out where the land we wanted to look at was.  We got out of the car to look around and my phone died again.  I've been trying not to buy a new phone because we're trying to buy land and build a home and I don't want our monthly phone bills to get any higher.  *sigh*

And it's great, in general.  Needs clearing but mostly it needs a road, and not a short road either.  It seemed like maybe there was a creek that ran somewhere before the land, which is awesome except that we assumed the reason the other roads went so far out of the way was to avoid an impassible stream.  And if those roads belonged to the neighbors, how were we supposed to get a road in there?  We reluctantly decided this wasn't a great option for us.  But the sound of nothing was soooo amazing.

You can see a roof all the way to the left and this land is a thin rectangle up the mountain to the right

I felt torn about this land.  It was beautiful and quiet and only two neighbors that we could see.  And although bidding makes this extremely cheap so we could potentially build a road... maybe not one that's a mile long and has to go over a creek.  Still, I did take a beautiful picture of Descanso for you on the way back.

It's so pretty!

The drive to Jamul from here was just as pretty as the above picture, maybe more.  Why is the land so impossible here and also so pretty?

We ended up in familiar territory.  If you've been following along, you'll recall that there was a road we simply refused to try in The Invisitable Lands.  Well, not today!  We mounted that sucker.  That road and many beyond it were so steep, I couldn't see the road in front of us going up or over a crest.  We just had to hope for the best.  

Also, I know I said that Beaver Hollow Rd was shittier than the shittiest toilet in Scotland ala Trainspotting, but ... these roads here in Jamul today... they recalibrated the range of shitty roads.  Like, someone took that toilet and put it in a porta-let park with other toilets of its ilk and then dumped rotting eels down each of them too.  When we were leaving and I finally got to shift into 3rd gear, I did a little "Whoop!" victory cry!  

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  We traversed the majorly horrible roads in 1st gear for way too long until we finally pulled off into what promised to be the road to the property.  Now, because we'd looked at Google Satellite view, we didn't expect there to be a road to this property.  But there kind of was.  It was confusing.  

We got out of the car, I think because we saw a camper and the always present signs forbidding us from coming near.  There were gun shots from the time we left the car until we got back to it.  That made me feel quite tenuous, especially with the dog there.

Then, there was the cement truck on the top of a mountain.

How'd you get there?

The road we walked down was so steep, we both slid and stumbled on the loose dirt along the way.  The dog did not.  Four legs beat two.  It was so dusty I wore my mask even though there were no people to sight. 

It never looks as steep in a picture

We made it down most of the way before understanding that the dot that indicated us on the parcel lines map said we were walking along side the property, not into it.  So, we were able to see that the property in question was the side of the hill and maybe over the hill too.  The cement truck was right in the middle of the property.

As usual, the land is just lovely.  It needs clearing and a way to get on it.  And frankly, it's a steep hill with not much area to easily build on and the southern view would make our home go up the hill at one end instead of the more usual back to front, which is awkward.  And that truck?  As we crested the hill back to the car, I could see that there was a rudimentary road switchbacking up to it.  Someone surely has been working on this land for years trying to make something out of it the way we would.  I hope that we'll have more luck, but this land wasn't for us.

Chris chose Italian for his birthday take-out, and I had my first day of eating some stuff not on my new diet.  I now have a sore throat and am seriously grateful for my new bidet.  But I haven't had the cheesecake I have made for Chris in years and it was great to have a tiny sliver today!

So, we really only have one property in which we're interested still for the tax auction.  It's the one in Valley Center on Welk Highland Rd.  I think I might have said it was Escondido yesterday, but I looked today and it wasn't.  Now we need to figure out if there's any HOA involved in that and maybe ask for a title search and consider if we need some engineer type person to give us an opinion on whether we can do what we want on that land.  And frankly, I wouldn't mind checking it out one more time.  It's not that I don't trust what we saw, it's more that I looked at the origami llama today and found that the other property for sale through the auction is on the other side of the llama and I'm concerned about whether we could cut into that hill any more than it already is.  So... we'll see.

I also did a good internet search for batteries for my phone.  You can change the battery on the Pixel 1 yourself.  You can also make your own tracheostomy if you really need to.  Or pluck out all the hairs in your nose.  I was willing to do it as I've done some hardware repair in my past, but getting the screen off and not fracturing it or messing up the ribbon connector inside really does look nuanced.  But then I saw that I could pay someone at Batteries + to do it.  Buy a battery and take the chance of ruining my phone with my own hands = $30.  New phone = hundreds of $$$ bumping our monthly bills for a few years.   Paying someone else to take the risk and presumably not mess up and still get the new battery? =$70 (plus tax).  Sold.  I have an appointment tomorrow.