What's In a Name

Some updates since my last post:  

Chris and I hemmed and hawed about the museum property and eventually made a very low offer.  We didn't intend to low ball the guy particularly, but the more we researched it the less plausible the place sounded.  For instance, the little doll buildings had electricity but the county said they couldn't have electricity so it was disconnected.  Now, we're generally rule followers and figured that, were we to be able to use those buildings like alternate rooms, they'd need electricity and probably they weren't allowed it because they weren't permitted.  And likely they weren't permitted because, if it was easy, someone would have already done it.  So we couldn't consider those buildings as part of the square footage as this guy had done.

Additionally, the place was touted as a 3 bedroom, but the 2nd and 3rd were in the loft of the cabin which... ok, maybe for young kids for a sleepover, but there was no privacy, and the other in the carriage house which had no bathroom and wasn't close to where there was a bathroom.  So we considered it a 1 bedroom really.

And then there was the unlikelihood that we could add onto the cabin in a way that would give us an earthship, having to do with laws about how close to the road you could build... anyway.  Our intrepid agent made the offer and the guy was all offended and so, we're not going with that property.

The wind farm that I hated... Chris pointed out that it is actually exactly what we're looking for and ... I was forced to agree.  But by the time we asked about it (a day or three after we'd seen it) they were already in escrow or something so, no on that one.

Then the dome house became available again.   Chris was less excited this time than I was.  After some research into how much it costs to build roads (omg, y'all so much!) we agreed we'd never be able to build a road up the cliff to the rest of the land where we could maybe build an earthship.  That left the dome house subject to a "just for now" home.  That's less appealing because seriously the whole inside needs to be redone and most of the land too.  And Melissa was able to find out that the house is in pretty bad disrepair though no details were shared.  They got some offer and we're not really waiting around to hear if it goes through.  It would be cheaper for us to live there but, while I'm excited to see what that home could be if you spruced it up, I'm not so excited because it's not what we want.  Foosticks.

We've now had a resurgence of looking at land.  Melissa actually has some contacts for folks who do land loans and though I haven't yet called them (no time), there is a chance that it could work for the amount of money we'd have to spend.

Oddly the tax auction site is having another post auction for stuff that didn't sell and stuff that didn't get redeemed.  We took a good look at the properties available and determined to see one piece of land in Valley Center.  

Amidst our general land/home research there was also another piece of land in Valley Center we wanted to look at at 11184 Zips Way, so off we went to view land.

This area of Valley Center does road names well.  We turned off of Old Hwy 300something or other onto Circle R Dr, a road which Chris proclaimed a Lite version of Lose-My-Lunch Lane.  But turning onto West Lilac Rd was far more redolent of the famously barfy road.  I have determined that W. Lilac shall now be known as Wiggly Squiggly Road. 

But it was absolutely gorgeous

Along Wiggly Squiggly Rd we at least found things to keep us amused like this sign for a ranch.

Chris accurately pointed out that Possum Hollow Ranch was better than Hollow Possum Ranch.  I said it was telling that it wasn't adjacent to a Taxidermy-B-Us.  

We then turned onto Lilac Rd where this roadway attaches

And yes, we pointed out that Frog Hollow Dr was better than Hollow Frog Dr and it was also not near a taxidermy shop.  It also came to mind that there was a store in Vermont when we both lived there called Frog Hollow and so we reminisced. 

The land for the tax auction was pretty far out and, while most of the roads leading there were good, some had blind hill crests with really steep hills which always scare me.  There was a private road but instead of saying that traveling it would result in us getting the pox should we dare, it simply said we should travel it at our own risk, which I thought was nice of it.

Our first view of the land was a prickly one for multiple reasons.

If you can't see it, there's a mess of cacti with a sign that says Beware of the Dog and another that says Warning: Electric Fence.  Handily, there was a place just next to the fence that we could slip in, which we did and did not find any dog but our own.

It was unsurprising to find that this land was extremely raw, meaning it wasn't cleared at all, and also probably on a rather big slope with many hills and, indeed, valleys.  We found a rock to sort of stand on and it didn't really improve the view any.  We really weren't surprised that whoever "bought" this at the auction didn't make good on their bid.

This is the rock

Here's my view from the rock

If I turned around, this was my view

It's not that we don't expect land to need some clearing.  It's more that this plot wasn't very big to begin with and we doubted the ability of a flat bed to get down Wiggle Squiggly Rd as well as the ludicrous hill on which this land was located.

The good thing about this is that I was feeling super guilty about possibly buying land at a tax auction because Melissa has been so good and done so much work for us, she really deserves to get paid.  So I was trying to think up ways to non-offensively offer her money if we bought this but failing to come up with a good plan.

Turned out that the other piece of land was only 10 minutes from this one.  It brought us back the way we'd come a bit and turned off on other roads that were better than those from which we'd come.  As we approached the corner of Patrick and Zips Way, where the parcel was located, I felt I already loved the land.  We drove up Zips Way and... then the land disappeared.  Where'd it go? 

Down.  It went down.  

A lot.

We found a place to pull of the road wondering literally how on earth we'd build a driveway.  There was flat land flush with the street right at the corner where we saw that this had at one time been a grapefruit orchard.

I did not pick a grapefruit; we already have one at home

This area of Valley Center seems to have people who grow fruit like the entirety of the town's finances come from marmalade. Regular residential homes have multiple orange trees.  We also saw grapefruit such as here, and a burgeoning vineyard, but most were oranges.  I do not understand why a family would grow so many fruit trees.  I'd have trouble eating all the fruit from one tree, let alone multiple.  It would make sense to me if they all decided to grow different fruits and trade around.  And yes, there were some fruit stands, but no... almost all the fruit trees in the various yards were oranges.  So... that seemed weird to me.

So, this parcel basically has a spit of land that extends from the corner into the plot.  It's narrow and not facing such that we could build south.

More grapefruit trees

And the view to the south wasn't so great.  It was just the side of the hill across the street.

There were some lovely cacti, which I would totally make prickly pear jam from.

But still, that spit of land was maybe 20 feet across (6 meters) and on each side was a valley so deep with so much growth, we couldn't see the bottom.  How do we know?  Well for one thing, there were palm trees in one direction and a palm this size, is quite tall.  We couldn't see the bottoms.

Then some of the views made it somewhat obvious...

And then there appeared to be a line where maybe water went at certain times of the year because the trees were old and green in such a way that suggested they had water.  That doesn't happen unless there's some steepness there.

You can only see tree tops

Took this after trying to climb down the slope to see if I could get to the edge and see the bottom.  I couldn't.  That dark hole in the center indicates it's a long way to the bottom.

We dolefully made our way back to the car.  This land just won't work.  We couldn't build anything of the size we'd need in the direction we'd need and to have a driveway of any kind, we'd have to bowl over many of the grapefruit trees.  Which, I mean, I'd only want to keep one necessarily, but if they're there we'd prefer not to kill them.

There were some lovely California poppies across the street though

The take home message is, apparently Valley Center is named such for actual reasons of topography.  We made our way home to cats who felt it was natural that we'd feed them early since we'd been gone so long.