...and at the same time revealing why we live in a rectangular fly-over vice the expensive coasts.
SWWBO and I have a dream.
It involves moving out to the country onto an acreage with a house, barn, fenced pastures, pond or two, a stream running through it, woods, and configured such that I can shoot from the back porch and not scare, annoy, or endanger our neighbors.
Since SWWBO travels to new cities a lot, we finally broke down last week and got her a Garmin Street Pilot C330. Nice little machine.
But you need to read the instructions, and pay attention. Because they tell you not to blindly follow the instructions, nor glue your eyes to the screen - because you need to balance what the little woman inside the box is telling you against the reality that exists outside your vehicle.
That, and you need to pay attention to the "avoidances" tab. Because out here, in farm country, there's something you should definitely mark!
Anyway - first up for bids yesterday was a listing for a smaller (1380 sq ft) walk-out ranch, with a Morton steel garage/barn, smaller outbuildings, two ponds, a stream, fenced and cross-fenced pastures, woods, hilly... and 77.7 acres. Yes, 77.7 Asking price? $340K. Yeah, eat yer heart out, 'coasters! Hey, the basement is unfinished, so can almost double that size, and in a way you *want*, and lots of carp can be stored in the outbuilding. And you can always *add* to the house.
So we went hunting for the place, using the new gizmo. And quickly discovered that the little woman who lives inside the machine that gives you directions... well, she doesn't really do a map reconnaissance, or true route analysis. She's pretty direct. Don't get me wrong - this thing works, and works well - but if you're traveling outside of a city, you can save time and grief if you do a little map recon. The chick in the box takes it pretty well if you blow off her suggestions, she just recalculates and gives you a new route, and it worked like a champ.
We got to the place in question, and dang if that doesn't look pretty good. We may not move on it, as we're still trying to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives, but I just wanted to make you city dwellers and coasters envious.
One interesting sidenote - I knew Leavenworth county was officially an oil-producing county, but I didn't realize how many wells were still pumping (current oil prices undoubtedly factor into it). Because the GPS took us by routes untraveled, I discovered that we have many more wells still active and pumping around here than I realized. Just an observation. One of the properties we looked at had a well on it - but I'm guessing the mineral rights belong to someone else, given how the robber barons worked that back in the 19th century.
"Avoidances." In the GPS you can set it to ignore things like toll roads and such. Well, out here, you should also set it to ignore dirt roads. In order to choose what she felt was the "fastest" route between locations, Miss Garmin sent us down farm roads. Actual, named public thoroughfares, but dirt. Or, rather, mud. We got to see parts of Leavenworth county we really weren't all that interested in - though right now, after all the rain, this place is *green*.
But there are some ricketly old bridges on those roads, too. Not to mention you may get jumped by the locals out riding their ATV's. And I mean literally jumped. As in over.
Didn't happen to us, but I could see where there were signs of that activity along our route. We did see three locals riding wheelie-style down the main street of Easton. Ah, to be young again.
4 Comments