December 11, 2009/ The End!

From Arizona...
...over the mountains...
...past the windmills...
...through rocks...
...to the desert of California


We did it. Arrived at home around 1:30 pm. This was a long trip away from home. We did over 3500 miles on the motor home and an additional 1800 on the car for a total of 5300 miles. We drove for 47 days every day! It is nice to just be in a house for a change though my house is not comfy anymore and echos when you talk. Rather cold and empty. Can hardly wait to clutter my new house to make it my own. It will be exiting and fun to give it personality because right now it is this perfect "model home" house. Got to mess it up a bit to make it homey. No problem there.
Anyway my dear reader, this is the end of my blog about our house hunt. Maybe if I feel inspired I might write about the move or the messing up of a perfect house. Who knows. Special thanks goes to Michelle who kept cheering me on and probably was the only steady reader. Actually I believe that Ursi and Alan also read the whole story. Thank you for hanging with me and write some nice emails back. Thank you also to Phil Martin who also read once in a while my blog just to find out if we move close to him! Then I know that Tanya, Jacqueline and Dan read it once in a blue moon. Oh, also Mary wrote a nice note and Jenny and Greg had a look at it. And not to forget Bilal who cheered me on and mentioned that my English is quite good and that I don't really make to many mistakes and this after being for 33 years in this country and he who has never set foot in this country speaks English like a native. Thanks Bilal, I love you.
Thank you all for following us on our journey. I also wrote it for me because we saw so many homes and so much stuff happened that in my old age all the houses we saw started to melt together and David had to remind me ever so often what happened here and there. Maybe one day I can tell my grandchildren about it. I will make it then a bit more exiting with some scary parts in it. Kids love that!
To all my faithful readers, have a very happy wonderful Christmas and hope that the next year will make your dreams come true.
Maya

December 10, 2009

Boring landscape
Lonely gas station in the middle of nowhere
Long straight way to go home
Trina on the back seat
David becoming quite fuzzy



Only one more day to go, thanks God. Headed through El Paso (Texas), Las Cruces (New Mexico), Deming (New Mexico), Lordsburg (New Mexico) and Tucson (Arizona) to Casa Grande (Arizona) where we are spending the night. No changes in Scenery, just dry and brown and flat. It was nice and warm and here in Arizona about 54 degree, warm after the 20 from a couple of days ago. Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota got hit today by that blizzard system, with Chicago dipping, including the wind chill factor, to a chilling -40. That is cold people. Michigan got buried in snow where 12people died because of snow and freezing conditions.
Talked to Michael again today and he told us that he visited with our neighbors and that they had basically no problems with us having animals but expressed concern about the chickens and the goats crossing over onto their properties and ruin their trees and flower beds. We will have to make sure that they understand that we will have our property fenced in and the animals will be in pens. But they seem open to the idea and I have no doubts that David will get them to agree since he is quite charming when he wants to be.
Tomorrow we will arrive in San Diego. I am looking forward to be home though it doesn't feel that homey anymore since most of my nick knacks are packed and the new owners are over there all the time. I will miss that house and my little garden but i do also look forward to my new house and all the possibilities it offers. I am dreading the move though, all the final packing, ordering a moving truck and changing everything to the new address. Phew, we will be busy. Only 3 weeks for all that and also visiting all relatives, friends, doctor appointments, a dentist appointment, hair appointment, Christmas and saying goodbye to every one. We will be hopping!

December 9, 2009

Moved right on on a cold but beautiful day through Dallas then switched to I-20 and headed towards El Paso, stopping in Van Horn for the night. Talking about a boring, boring drive. There is nothing for hundreds of miles then cotton fields along the highway and then changing to brown dirt and nothing else. Maybe an occasional cactus. But oh so dry!
It is amazing that there are ever so often little villages or just a gathering of huts and mobile homes.
What are people doing out here? There is NOTHING! Here and there an oil pump and that is it.
This was for sure the longest day. When there is nothing to see the miles seem to go by much slower. Nothing to look at then a very straight road. The speed limit is a crazy 80 miles/hr and for semi trucks 70 miles. That is insane. David drove between 70 and 75 because of me griping when he hit 80 and we got overtaken by those huge tractor trailers up to 24 wheels. Fudge, that is like an avalanche taking you over, scary! Anyway was glad when we checked in this little motel at the bud of the world.
While we were driving we got also a call from Michael regarding our new house. There was an issue because the house is in a residential zone and we weren't sure if we could have chickens and goats. Our acceptance of the offer depends on that we could have small livestock. Michael researched at the city's office and couldn't get a straight answer so he asked the seller to pay a lawyer to interpret the zoning of the property. It came to it that theoretically we can't have livestock but could file for a conditional use permit to change that. The city will send a letter to our neighbors to find out if they would be okay with us having animals. So David told Michael that I would not want to buy the house without being permitted to have chickens and goats. The alpacas we will add when the dust has settled. Anyhow, David asked Michael if he could go and chat with the neighbors a bit and feel them out since he knows the ones on the right and him being a local. Michael agreed and will get back to us tomorrow. Poor man, he will have earned his commission by the time we are done with him!

December 8, 2009

On we went from just east of St.Louis (still in Illinois) through St Louis (Missouri), Springfield (Missouri), Tulsa (Oklahoma) and Oklahoma City to short of the Texas border on our way to Dallas. We are going as south as possible since there are snow blizareds all over the midwest. The route we wanted to take would have brought us through Flagstaff which got hit with 20 inches of snow and part of the freeway heading that way through New Mexico was so iced over that they closed the freeway. This low pressure front was also heading towards Wisconsin, Michigan and grazing the north of Indiana and Ohio.
We just left in the nick of time and though it rained part of the drive for about 3 hours we must have gotten through the very south border of the front. But we don't want to take any chances hence the small detour to the south and then driving from Dallas to San Diego. The weather forcast for Dallas tomorrow calls for sun but very,very cold weather lows in the 10th and high in the 20th! Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! Cold!

December 7, 2009

Oh how nice to wake up in a warm motel room. Trina enjoyed it too since we had a king size bed and somewhere during the night she moved in with us and cuddled between David and I. She can't do that at home with a queen size bed where there is just enough space for David and me. Looked out the window and looked at a sugar covered landscape. Over night fell about an inch of snow. Everything looked so pure and christmasie. I can hardly wait to move here and experience all the fun of four seasons and yes I am aware the headaches that come with it. Anyway, I am ready for the challenge.
Went to Michael's office to do the final signing. We are now proud owners of a river house in Ohio! Wow it is real now, no more backing out, we are moving to Ohio. It just hit me. This will be a new chapter in our lives.
The snow stopped falling and we started to get on the road heading back to San Diego. Drove through Fort Wayne, Indiana, Indianapolis and on to St. Lois Illinois. Are staying in a motel over night and will take off early tomorrow.
We hope to be back home by Friday evening.

December 6, 2009/ This is it!

Oh baby, it is final. Our offer got countered and we countered back and got accepted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we got accepted for a much lower offer then we were ready to make if the seller would have not accepted lower. So saved a bundle of money! Yeah again!!!
Will sign all the papers tomorrow and then off we go back to San Diego to pack!
Put our RV in storage today about 15 min from our home and will drive the car back. We will make it home a bit faster and cheaper to boot.
Oh by the way this house has cable and high speed Internet. We are back in civilisation!
Checked into a motel today were we enjoy the warmth, electric without running the generator and Internet. What a luxury after 3 days in the Walmart parking lot. And would you believe it, we are watching the Chargers game since they play Cleveland the local team. Lucky us. Have been on football withdrawal.
What a good day! Oh, I can hardly wait to move into my new big Riverfront house!
Love you all!

More pictures

Enclosed sun porch
Bonus room
Guest room with sitting area
Library
Kitchen



I can only download 5 pictures per post, hence this additional post!

December 5, 2009 / Third time is a charm!

Kitchen
Master bath looking from closet
Master bath looking to the walk in closet
Huge master bedroom
Dining room


Went to look at the house with Michael and after driving back to his office kept on thinking:"Why the heck didn't we make an offer on this house in the first place". Well at that time I was still looking for that old farm house in a heavenly setting. Well you know what, this is the best house we have seen and also in a lovely setting as you can see in the pictures yesterday. This is just such a beautiful, almost new house, built in 1996. So yes, we wrote an offer. We expect an answer back no later then Monday by noon. Meanwhile we went to look at wood floors and paint since I want to rip out all the (brand new) carpets. I just don't want to have carpets in my house! Then we looked at paint. As you can see in the pics the seller likes it dark and you who have been at my house know how much I like light and bright. Will have to take the wallpaper down in some of the rooms and paint everything probably again in a happy yellow. But I do so love that big enclose sun porch. I will probably have my work room out there. Will see. The huge bonus room has unfortunately only one window but Michael who is also a builder said that it would be easy to build a few dormer windows in there which of course would make that room the ideal work studio for me! Will think about that!

December 4, 2009

Me, freezing my nose off
David and Trina at the river
House from the front
House from the back with back porch built into the pond
View from the house to the river


Cruised back to Defiance today to set up the RV at (you guessed it) Walmart. Then drove out to OUR new house (I hope) to take in the scene and take pictures. What a lovely place. We will meet with Michael tomorrow to see it inside again and yes, absolutely write an offer. We really have to get back to San Diego. It will be snowing next week and I don't want to drive that far in snow. Was raining all day yesterday but is beautiful sunny today with the temps only going up to 32 (0) and the lows around 24 (-6) plus there was a nasty wind. But sunny, sunny, sunny.
Hope you will enjoy the photos from the outside of our house. Inside pics will follow tomorrow!

December 3, 2009/ You won't belive it!

Went early again down to our house to meet with the flooring people. David walked up the land aging so told the guys myself what I want. Looks like we are spending more and more money. Left to drive to Coshocton to visit with the seller agent. Chatting with him he told us that he hadn't got in touch yet with the seller regarding our request to split the repairs. So left his office and back in the car I said to David: Maybe we just should let it go and buy the River front house. That said it all just fell in place. This house needs to much repair, is to far from a good sized town, has no high speed Internet or cellular reception (yep, David and I are information highway addicts) and has no good shopping. So went back to the RV and called our agent that we are backing out of the contract (are you happy, Jacqueline?). Then went called our favorite Realtor Michael who had become a friend by now to find out if the River house is still available. Yes it is! We will drive back to Defiance tomorrow and meet with Michael on Saturday for one more look at the house. But i am willing and ready to make an offer on that almost new house sitting on this beautiful river with a huge pond and less then a mile from a good sized town with a population of 36000. I love Defiance with its little stores, nice cafes and every chain restaurant and department store at the end of the town. It is also only 1 hour from Toledo and Lake Erie. I hope that this will be our last offer we will write. I want to be on the way home by next Monday.

December 2, 2002

Yuck!


Went to the house again to meet with the plumber, then with the foundation guy, then with the well guy, then the water clarification system guy, then the excavation guy and last but not least the electrician. The house is on a hill and the water seeps from the hill through a hole into the basement. So everything down there is covered in some red (iron) sludge and corroding everything including the basement wall. The house has been empty for 2 years and the sludge has plugged up the plumbing, the sump pump, killed the water purification system and corroded the electrical panel. There is some major work involved to make everything safe and reinforce the basement. Total rewiring of the house and some shoring up and rebuilding of the basement wall. Also filling in an old cistern and redoing some of the plumbing is involved. And to top it we would do some excavation and move the hill back some 20 to 30 feet and put a drainage system into the ground. There is mine water seeping on a lot of those properties in this area from the old iron and coal mines. Crazy country!
Well the repairs were totalling about 30000 grand and David decided to ask the seller to pay half of it or we walk! We should have an answer buy tomorrow.

December 1,2009

Wow, time flies, it is December already. We had another cloudless sky and temps in the high 50ties. Went to meet the home inspector at our new house but not without swinging by another walmart to get some "no trespassing" signs. The inspector was already there and after about 3 hours of checking everything and even listening with a stethoscope for termites in the wood our house got a fair to good health bill. There is a major problem with a spring who just bubbles out of the ground behind the garage and created a lot of rot on the support beams. Needs to be fixed. Then our water comes from a cistern in the basement and that is overflowing and there is some water in the basement. We will meet a plumber tomorrow morning. Then there is a foul electric outlet in one room and the upstairs outlets are not grounded. Will also meet an electrician tomorrow. So there is some little stuff going on but nothing serious and everything works so we can move in.
Went for lunch up the street and saw this welcome hunters shack. Looked like a convenience store but also sold hot pizza and in some dishes sausages, shredded chicken stuff and hot dogs all served in some dirty bowls laid out on the store counter top and you just helped yourself. Outside the owner cooked some fish on a greasy BBQ. Oh friend, the Health Department would have had a heyday if they knew that this shack exists. The place was a revolving door with hunters, heavy duty rednecks and bikers coming and going. On some of the trucks or AT V's you saw deer legs hanging out or they just but the dead deer on the roof of their cars.
I don't know how long hunting season lasts but I hope not very long.
In the afternoon we met with the septic guy who pumped out the septic, uncovered the 2 tanks and recommended that down the line we should be thinking of getting a bigger septic tank. Well since here things are about half what they cost in San Diego, the price to do it was pleasantly low. Our main issue is the spring behind the garage and the leaky cistern. That we will have to address first.
Left around 3pm and went back to our favorite farm and tractor store. I saw some flannel lined jeans there the other day and since the weather forecast warned of 20-28degree weather I wanted to be prepared. Then oh my dear friends I also got me a quilt padded overall to match with David's. Makes me look like a blimp but is so cozy warm.
On the way back to the RV we stopped at this meat shop to look for the famous Trail Bologna. This is an insider delicatessen as we were told by some Ohio natives! Grabbed also a wheel of Guggisberg Swiss cheese.
We are still planing to head back home sometimes this weekend!

November 30, 2009

Went to Coshocton to open a new bank account. Well gosh, we are locals now. Also went to the post office to tell them that we will be the new residents at
15681 County Road 429, Coshoctaon, OH 43812. Yep, that will be our new address! Strange, after living for 30 years in San Diego. But it was amazing how nice the people are here. At the bank they offered us coffee while doing the paperwork for the new account. Then the guy who helped us brought the manager of the bank over who told us that he likes to meet new account holders, and that at a Chase bank. While we filled out papers I mentioned to David not to forget to find a place to pick up a phone book and the next thing our guy takes a phone book of his desk and gave it to us. In San Diego it took about 3 years till the girls at my Union Bank recognized me even I went about three times a week to do business and had 5 different accounts there! Incredible.
Then at the post office the clerk chatted a bit and when we left he called "welcome to Coshocton"! We were speech less!
Then we went to the tourist information for the town to pick up a town map and the next thing they lady there told us the whole history of the town, showed us old pictures and explained the festivals of the year. We will be very busy because all the surrounding towns have their on festivals and we are surrounded by about hundred little towns and villages. I can hardly wait to jump with both feet into small town living.
Went back to OUR house to hang around and figure what work needs to be done. When we pulled into our drive way there was another car parked there. We thought that it might be the sellers realtor and David went to look for him.But nobody was there. He went to the barn and then came back to tell me that there are hunting equipments in the barn. Somebody must be hunting in our woods. So David called the Sheriff who arrived within about 15 min. Nice guy. We introduced our self and invited him into the house to show him around. Chatted a bit but there was really nothing he could do. He promised that they would keep an eye on our property. Also recommended to take down the "For Sale" sign, close the gate and post "No tresspassing signs". He mentioned though that they were probably sold out every where since hunting season just started and hunters had a tendency to tresspass. Nice!!! Went to Walmart and sure enough all the "no hunting" signs, "privat propert" signs and "no tresspassing" signs were sold out. Bought a couple of solid locks and will chaine the gate close
tomorrow. We have moved to the "Wild West" folks.
Tomorrow we will meet with the home inspector. Should be interesting what he has to say. Our offer is depending on our satisfaction of the home inspection. So if there is something serious going on with the house we can back out. Should be okay though.
Read on tomorrow!

November 29, 2009/ We got the house of my dreams!!!

Swiss cheese every where
that's what little girls play with here, pink rifles
Little Switzerland of Ohio
Swiss Flags along the street
Swiss Restaurant


Slept in this morning since we had NO appointments and no place we had to be! Yeah, first day of loaving! Left the RV park to cruise the Amish/Swiss towns close by. David read in one of the books available at the RV park store that the Amish were founded on January 1st 1525 by a Swiss man in Zurich who split away from the catholic church. I was wondering why there is all this swiss influence in an Amish area. For some reason I thought that the Amish were from Dutch origination. One never stops learning.
Got to this Swiss/Amish area with cheese factories abundent, a Swiss restaurant which strictly serves Swiss food and antique stores on every corner. But as in Switzerland everything was closed on Sunday. What the heck, am I so americanised that I need to shop on Sunday? You bet I am!
Were somewhat disapointed so turned to drive back with a smal detour to visit our fast becoming favorit store, the Farm and Tractor store who sells everything from Tractors to Carthart clothes to lifestock feed to wood burning stoves to kids toys. Then Oh no, there was a huge antique mall next door so had to check that one out and could have furnished 5 houses with cool stuff in no time. I tell you, every small village with a population of more then a hundert people has at least one antique store. They are as abundent here as Starbucks in San Diego. And oh the stuff they are selling and the prices, it is out of this world. i was holding myself (barely) back thinking that I need first a house before I shop and that I will be back in this State within 5 weeks. Oh my god, this is getting so serious with our move.
So went back to the RV and took a shower. Even Trina got to have a nice hot shower today. Then made dinner and then the phone rang!!!!!!
The seller countered within $5000 of what we wanted to pay. So told Carol to give them our last offer. And they went for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are now the proud owner of the funkiest, coolest, sweetest hobbit house located within 20 min from the swissiest area loaded with antique stores. Oh my friends,I am so absolutly happy. Thank you for sending all that good energy our way.
Oh by the way the weather agine was a balmy 60 degree with cloudless sky. Now for 2 weeks they predicted snow and we haven't gotten it! Funny though, 5 minutes after we got the call that we got the house it started to rain. It seemed like Ohio showed us its best side while we were looking and now when we are commited it will go back to normal. The strange thing is that when we were looking in Oregon this spring it rained and snowed every day I was there. It must be a sign that we belong here that it stayed so nice while we were searching.
We will go tomorrow to Akron, which is about 45 minutes from her to do some banking. We thought we were smart when we moved our account over to Bank of America, thinking that they have offices everywhere. We thought wrong. There are only 6 offices in the whole State of Ohio. Oh the good life in Ohio. But the nice thing is that though we live in the country we are only 15 min away from a small town and 45 minutes from Columbus, 45 min from Canton, about 1 1/2 hour from Cleveland and about 2 hours form Pittsburg.
We have a home inspection done on tuesday and maybe by Tursday head back up to Toledo where we reserved an indoor storage for the motor home and then hop in the car and head back to San Diego to finsh packing, celebrate Christmas with Gabriel, Michelle and her fiance Bilal and the Jebb family.
I'm happy, happy, happy!

November 28, 2009/ WE MADE AN OFFER!!!

Went back to house number 2 this morning since we didn't see much last night in the dark. It looked pretty good to me last night. Well it was still pretty nice this morning only the daylight also revealed all the problems that house has. It would have needed a new roof on the house, the garage and the work shop. Also the electrical looked rather scary! A lot of major work. So we went on to meet with Carol at noon at this sweet little tourist village resembling a bit Julian outside San Diego, just much smaller. Carol had 3 more properties to show us so hoped into her car and did some more cruising but you know, I think David and I had our mind allready made up. We just didn't like anything anymore since that funky little house with a big barn stole our hearts yesterday. We asked Carol if we could swing by it one more time and again it just was that this hobbit house (of course bigger but just as cute) called our name. After roaming the place for another half an hour we were ready to make an offer and decided to go back were our car was parked in the little tourist place and started to sign the contract over a glass of wine. I am insanely happy because all of you will be blown over when you see our silly house which looks like it just walked out of a antique country house magazine with worn tilting wood floors, lots of old built in cabinets made from rough wood, silly paperd kitchen as you can see in the pictures and just oozing country charm. I will leave everything just as it is, not even refinishing the scaffed and marked wood floors. We only will have to pull up the carpets in three rooms and I want to get a new stove though the one in the kitchen now looks okay, but I dream of a ceramic top stove. Then we have to have the chimneys checked since the 3 fire places haven't been used in a while. And there is also a drainage problem because the spring on the property just runs water every where so will need to be directed away from the garage and the house. Otherwise we are ready to go!
Yep friends and family, we are so ready to move into our hobbit house. Will have to visit all those hundreds of antique stores here in the area and attend all the dozends of weekly auctions in order to furnish our house. Some of our IKEA stuff will just not do here. Oh, life is good! Did I tell you also the today was a cloudless sky and sunny all day. It must be a good sign. We will know hopefully by tomorrow if our offer has been accepted. Please work on the sending good thoughts again, we nned all the help on this.
Love you all my friends. Enjoy the pictures.

November 27, 2009 /Yeah we found it!!!

House 2


House 1



Was below freezing this morning with an occasional snowflake falling. The sky was gray and heavy with clouds. We got up at 6:45 because we were supposed to meet a realtor in New Concord about an hour and a half from our RV park by 10am. By the time we finished breakfast and were ready to load up the car with maps, snacks, Trina and her diaper bag it was raining. Looked like we got the first bad day!
Arrived at Carol's office on time while the rain had already stopped about half an hour into our trip.
Carol is one interesting lady. Her family owned some oil fields in Bakersfield,CA and after she sold her share she moved here to Ohio. She got into farming and land development and real estate. She is an animal lover and shares her farm with 10 dogs, 100 cats, a herd of goats and a 700 lbs pig who lives in the garage. Those are all stray animals she takes in or people bring to her or she finds in abandoned or repossessed homes. She said her pig eats 4 gallon of dog food every day and she goes through over 800 cans of "Fancy Feast" cat food per month. Woah!
Anyway we brought her some print outs of houses we wanted to see. She added a few of her search after messing with her non cooperating computer for an hour or so. Then she was hungry and since it is custom for Ohio Realtors to invite their buyers to lunch we had to go and try the food at this awesome BBQ place.
So finally we started out to look at houses who were all about 45 min. apart. Number 1 sucked, number 2 ditto, number 3 the same and then the next one was one we wanted to see since we printed it out in October at home.
WOW,WOW,WOW! An old farm house, 2575 sqft (wished it would be a bit bigger) on 28 acres with a big metal (wished it would be wood but more sturdy) barn with 12 stalls, hay loft, 2 foaling pens, tack room and much more. There is also a detached 2 car garage. But oh the house. It is this funky painted old style farm house built in 1900 but still with 3 full nice baths, old, old beautiful wood floors, some painted and all those built in cabinets. Oh my, I love this house! And guess what, David loves it too and of course the barn and acreage. It is on a hill so not all the land is usable and some is also wooded. But enough for some goats and a couple of Alpacas. And it is priced that we still have a bit of money left to do some upgrading and buy a tractor! Yeah people, we got our self a farm.
Meanwhile it got late and we had one more house we decided to see since it looked promising too. So raced there and got a glimpse of it just before dark and .....dang it another WOW house. Also old farm house with 33 acres, a bit larger then the last one and a detached garage with a huge finished room on top. Also old wood floors, funky kitchen and a load of old fashioned built ins. It got dark and we couldn't real check it out totally so we will go back tomorrow and spend an hour on each house looking and checking. The homes are both vacant and ready to move in. Oh what am I going to do??? It will be difficult to make a decision but we will buy one of them for sure. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!
Oh by the way the properties are both belonging to Coshocton, a town of 11000 people and picture book beautiful. Will let you know tomorrow where we stand!