Thursday, September 17, 2020

Another Road Trip

We took a 4 day weekend and drove over to Idaho AGAIN to view houses. 
The first one was in Dixie, way out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. 
The house was at the end of the road, 3 miles from Dixie, 2.5 hours from the next closest town of Elk City & another 2.5 hours to the closest grocery store in Grangeville.


This is the Black Diamond Lodge
Sleeps 15, on 7.5 acres in the heart of the mountains.
Its got so much going for it but its not livable all year and there's nowhere for the horses.
There could be pens built but my horses are pasture ornaments, not ridable to the trip over would stress them out.

This is the 4 unit apartments, each one has its own bedroom & bathroom, the two end units each have small kitchenettes. Each room comes fully furnished.


This is the Kitchen building


Inside its got the kitchen, a small bathroom & seating area. It comes fully furnished with all the appliances you could ever need.


From the porch of the owners residence, you can target shoot on your very own range



Inside owners house


This is the hot tub house, its got 4 large screened windows and the floor tilts to one side and the tub doesn't work but its got potential


We loved this place as a full time residence for us but I'm not too happy with the 5 hours to a grocery store, 8 to a costco. The drive between Grangeville & Elk City was gorgeous, along a river, but the last half of the drive is long and no river.

The next day we saw a house along the way that was in a beautiful location, 5 fenced acres of gently rolling pastures. The house had been purchased in August 2019 for $199,000 and then totally remodeled probably from the studs out. Everything brand new. But the house was too small, there was no garage, shop or barn & they're asking $425,000

So we continued on to this house in an airport neighborhood. 
5 acres, 3 of it fenced. Big 2700 SF house and a 44x44 sf airplane hanger that would make an amazing garage & shop for Lan. The fence was nice and would definitely keep the dogs in. 
This is the view from the road


This is the view from the runway.
I don't know when this photo was taken but there is no green grass now, its just rocks & weeds.


This airplane doesn't even belong to the owners


The hanger opens like this but that's a man door on it. Inside has concrete floor, insulated & heated. Its large enough to park 8 cars easily if needed, its got a projection tv & screen on the wall & heavy duty shelving along the walls


There are 2 acres of land on this side of the fence that can't have anything on them. You can drive to your hanger with your car but you can't park your car outside. 
You're buying this as a runway & if you don't fly then you're wasting money.
The have CCRs & an HOA of $230 per year that goes up 3% every year and they can make you pay for improvements to the roads & runway.
Plus only 2 horses 'behind' house but that would be in the hot, sunny, no shade place.


The house was nice enough and big inside.


The kitchen hadn't ever been updated but it was still OK and had tons of storage.


None of the windows down there open & the shades were up so it was pretty dang hot inside. 
The deck stops right outside the slider, 
it should have been extended all the way down & around & awnings installed.


This is the downstairs family room I guess, it was a bit cooler but not much. That's a bar, which we would have to remove and make into something else, maybe a closet?


The master bedroom had regular closets & a bathroom where they boasted a jetted tub but the jets were broken & popped out & the tiles around it were broken & probably had rot underneath.
This house is totally livable and move in ready but not for us. I'm pretty spoiled with my quartz kitchen countertops, hardwood floors and Lan enjoys his garage, shop & equipment shed and we both enjoy our covered arena & barn.

There were several other houses we were supposed to view but they all went Pending or our realtor couldn't get ahold of the owners to view. 

On the way to Idaho the sky was clear and blue, on the way home the smoke from the Oregon & California fires came in & from CDA west, we couldn't see more than a half mile away. At Snoqualmie Summit, we couldn't see the lake nor the ski lifts & both of us felt like puking. You could smell the campfire smell & those fires were hundreds of miles away.

 

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Summer Vacation

This was supposed to have posted two months ago but it didn't so I'll share now.

We hooked up the new to us trailer on May 29th, 2020 and hit the road.
2014 Skyline 17' Nomad. Dinette folds down to a queen bed, 2 bunks, bathroom (toilet, tub, shower),
2 burner stove, sink, heater, A/C, power awning.
We paid $4,000 for this gem & are COMPLETELY happy with it.


We were gone for two weeks, from Washington to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, 
Montana, Idaho & Washington. 
We had to go to Cody, Wyoming to get the title for the trailer filled out completely & properly as it wasn't done the first go around. Since the tabs expired 
THE DAY WE LEFT TOWN, 
we got 2 trip permits from the Washington DOT. The rest of the time we weren't worried about getting pulled over.

This spot was in Wallace, Idaho. As soon as we got set up it started to POUR, thunder & lightening. Awesome storm. Woke up to another storm in the morning.


We visited Yellowstone National Park on our way to Cody, then again on our way back into Montana. At the park we were lucky to see Moose, a lone Wolf, Bison, Elk, a black bear sitting in the woods, deer & a lot of birds. We didn't get to see any Grizzlies.

We were also extremely lucky because they only just opened the park 3 days previous to our visit, all National parks had been closed due to Covid19. We encountered very few people, no traffic and when Old Faithful was getting ready to go off, there were maybe 300 people all together not the 3000 that are usually there on a summer day.
They had all the campgrounds closed so we had to stay outside the park but that was OK, we hadn't planned on going in advance so had no reservations.
The places we did stay were still pretty dang nice.



This was about the 5th night of our trip & the first place where we were allowed to have a campfire.


The only problem we really had was the alternator on the truck went out & we had to drive into Sand Point, Idaho from Thompson Falls, Montana & then back without the truck dying & leaving us stranded. With the new part in hand & a solar panel charging the batteries, we made it back right at dusk. Truck was fine after that.
OK, not fine. Since then the BRAKE idiot light has been on & we can't figure that out. Its not affecting the truck brakes & the trailer brakes don't seem to work anyway.

Since then, we have gone on a couple other trips:

Vance Creek Bridge


Camped at Brown Creek camp ground


Took a day trip to Spider Lake on the Olympic Peninsula





John Henry slept so well that night




Last week we drove hwy 410 to Naches and bought 4 tons of hay.



Coming home with the hay over Chinook Pass, we decided we really do need a new truck. This old Dodge was only going 25MPH up the mountain & in the olden days it would have been going up at the speed limit. We had to stop & let it cool down, just a mile from the summit.