August 10th, 2008 - Driving Home From Grayland

Why do I prefer driving home along the gorge on the Washington side rather than the interstate on the Oregon side? Aside from the obvious; that the Oregon side is an interstate, and interstates are the Wal-Marts of the road, killing small diners, roadside attractions and individuality, on the Washington side, you also get amazing curvy roads, tunnels, an occasional Sasquatch, and views like these:

Classic Car & Semi

Lush Greenery

Oh yeah, and This View!

On the way home, we also stopped at The Hungry Redneck Cafe, which is this great little diner outside of Durkee, OR and had some huge portions of excellent grub, topped off by the BEST strawberry pie I'd ever eaten in my life. If you're ever in the area, which would be in the middle of nowhere off the side of the interstate, you should stop. Really. Unless you're on a diet that you plan to stay on, anyway.

The Hungry Redneck Cafe!

Apparently, the Hungry Redneck also has Espresso, whatever that fancy word means, I'm guessing it means sorta fast in Redneckian.

Grayland/Westport, WA - early August

The Docks in Westport

After touring the Sea Spray Motel, we wandered around Grayland a bit, visiting the overflowing and excellent antique store across the street, and chatting with the gentleman that owned the grocery store. Heading north, we noticed a greenhouse, and stopped, partially because we saw that they sold Science Diet dog food, which we feed our dogs, and partially because we love greenery, and wanted to see what kinds of local plants were on offer. After leaving the greenhouse, we realized that we'd seen about all there was to see in Grayland, and decided to head up to Westport for dinner.

Westport, WA

Westport was a fun little city, and a dramatic change in feel from Grayland. Grayland felt very much like a little beachfront town. The kind of place that is just waiting on the verge for something to happen, but also like the kind of place that doesn't want to do anything to make it happen, kind of quiant, but isolated. Westport is a fishing town, and has a lot more of a feel for tourism, with a great little section of shops and restaurants, and docks rather than beaches. They were also just starting to get some "Big business" tourism in, with the building of some big condos and resort style places. One thing we found kind of odd and a bit off-setting was that in every place we stopped, if they asked why we were in town and we told them we were looking at property, they immediately recommended a realtor or had property to sell themselves! One lady even had flyers ready that she handed out to us.

New Development off the port side!

We ate at the Half Moon Bay Bar & Grill, which we had assumed was going to be a bit more of a down and dirty bar, and ended up being a fairly "nice" restaurant. The food was good, though not as good as the dives we'd eaten in previously, and the help also argued with us, upon requesting a refill of my beverage that they didn't carry Dr Pepper, and that I must have mistaken the Root Beer in my first glass... not something anyone that's ever tasted the two is likely to do... We spent a nice evening strolling around Westport, in good spirits, and feeling pretty hopeful about the trip out. We'd spent a good amount of money on gas for the trip, and for one as shotgun as it was, we were worried that it would be for naught. Luckily, it wouldn't be, but not for any of the reasons we hoped! As night fell, we headed for home, hoping to make it a good distance before sleep took us, and our ride became our bed...

Book Review - THE LOCH by Steve Alten

The Loch by Steve Alten
2005, 487pgs

Maybe it was the locale of the Clive Cussler book that I disliked. This book wasn't written any better, and didn't really explode with brilliant ideas or anything, but there was something about it that grabbed me more. I should make it a point to re-read Sahara in the summer time - on a beach, or something. The plot of The Loch was almost custom made for late night winter reading. Zachary Wallace is a brilliant marine biologist that grew up on Loch Ness before moving to America where he became a renowned scientist with a focus on large underwater animals, like the giant squid, during the search for which he nearly dies. He had an uncaring slightly abusive relationship with his father, and until his half brother shows up to tell him that his pa is on trial for murder, hadn't spoken to his father in decades. Naturally, he feels obligated to return to Loch Ness for his father's trial, a place with a lot of ghosts, an old friend, an old crush, a mysterious body of water where he almost drowned as well, and a manipulative father who may have more ulterior motives than anything else.

Of course, this being a book by the author of Meg, a tale of a giant killer shark ( I think - I haven't read Meg) Nessie makes an appearance too, and begins craving flesh... human flesh! OooOoooOooh! Obviously, this is a book where it's better not to stress the details and go along for the ride. The characters are all pretty realistic and the atmosphere of the Loch and area is great. It really made me want to take a trip. Alten also does a pretty thorough job of making his Scottish characters speak in spelled out Scottish Brogue, and while it takes a bit of getting used to, eventually their dialogue sounded pretty good to me. (Saying their lines out loud was fun too, much to my dogs amusement.) While the ending is never really in question, and some of the characters are a little one sided, I enjoyed reading The Loch. Alten liberally sprinkles actual quotes of Nessie sightings and snippets from an old diary into the story, and those, combined with the descriptions of the settings made it a great read that moved at a quick pace. My only real complaints about the book; The love interest seemed a little too opportunistic and over the top "slutty", it seemed like there should have been a bit more interaction with the half brother, and the book was kind of heavy in hardback - made my wrist hurt. I could probably ask for more realistic action thriller about Loch Ness, but if it existed, I probably wouldn't like it as well!

7/10

Now Reading - Fat Tuesday by Sandra Brown

Grayland, WA - The Tour - Part Three

Obviously, the most important part physically about a motel is it's location and the guest rooms, but one area that we've found is really lacking is the owner's residence and office area. While it's something that the guests don't have a lot of contact with, it's still quite important, and one that Lindsay and I focus on a lot. Most people that we've spoken to that are selling their business are doing it for one of two reasons, either they are ill or retiring, or they didn't know what they were getting in to and decided they didn't like running a motel. Working for a small owner/operated motel is an incredibly time consuming process, but it can be very rewarding. The biggest, and most obvious obstacle is that you're always on call, and pretty much need to be there all of the time. Luckily for us, we're pretty much designed for that lifestyle. I read obsessively, paint, sculpt, watch movies, lift weights, write, cook... and my wife likes to do a lot of crafts like Knitting, cross stitch, quilting as well as a lot of writing and reading. Neither of us have ever been much for getting out or anything, we like meeting people and talking, but as long as we can walk the dogs once a day, and have something physical to do like painting walls or building flower boxes, we could happily be cooped up in the same acre of property 24/7.

With that in mind, the Owner's residence was very important to us. We figured that if we are happy there, so will the guests, and this place had a lot of potential. In addition to an office and a 2 bedroom house, we were told by our Realtor that there was a 2 car garage that had been converted to a shop, perfect for my art room/workshop. There was also an office and a public restroom in the same building. Knowing all of this, we were pretty anxious to check out the building that we would potentially be spending a large amount of time in.

From the outside, it wasn't excessively promising... The wood had started to give in a few places, and there were quite a few windows that seemed to be obscured by junk piled inside.
An observation further supported by the first thing we looked at, the "public restroom" which was apparently now the paint closet.

The office was surprisingly small, especially considering the amount of space the building took up, merely a tall desk and a little hallway to stand in. This was a little disappointing, as we'd planned to put in a small gift shop and sell some trinkets, scarves, kites, etc... something to get non guests in, and to check out the motel, as well as a way to sell some of our crafts and artworks. While in the office, we spoke with the manager, who refused to let us see most of the house. He'd let us in the front room, and that was it. The manager and his family hada bird in the room, and beyond that, all I really remember about it was a couple of decorative teddy bears, and general feeling of slovenly distaste from the manager.

We then did a quick run through of the shop/laundry room/storage area... For those of you who have always wondered what the back rooms of a motel look like... it's usually not this...

In retrospect, the visit to the motel should have been less than exciting, but it was thrilling to us. This was the first real step we'd taken towards our dreams, and as many problems we saw, all of them were things we could overlook or work around. We impressed Mabel with our knowledge of motels and our enthusiasm, and even she came away from the tour feeling pretty hopeful about the potential and our prospects. The only real downer was the uncooperative manager and his family, who, we were told, did not want to lose his cushy position and job. We would later find out exactly how cushy that job was....

We left the motel extremely pumped up, chattering away about plans both for the day and for the future, deciding to spend the rest of the day in the area, checking out shops and taking in the ambiance of the twin harbors.

Grayland, WA - The Tour - Part Two

The first thing we noticed about the grounds was quite positive, a nice little firepit in the corner. Washington is a much colder area than Oregon and California, and we could immediately see how something like this would be great for those chilly evenings under the stars! Unfortunately, beside it was something that sounded excellent in theory, but it's execution here left a LOT to be desired...

It was a Crab Cleaning Station/Covered Barbecue area.

Unfortunately, it looked like something you'd be afraid to let your kids near, with uneven boards, rotting wood and rusted out hunks of metal...

All the same, it was a great idea, and something we could pretty easily tear down and rebuild to be really nice eventually.

There was also a big 'ol shipping container on the property, presumably used to store the boat and four wheeler, or just piles of random stuff, judging by what we'd seen so far...


Next up was the owner's house and office area, something we were pretty excited to see, not just because we were going to be living there, but also because we had big plans....

Just a quick note

The Sea Spray was just the first place we looked at on our quest to find the new future we're dreaming of... the first of many. Keep in mind that when we saw them, it was only the beginning of August. Since then, we've looked at a half dozen other places, some seriously, some humorously.

I'm just spacing it out to increase the suspense! hahaha!

We are in serious talks right now to take over and run a motel in Washington, but I've got a lot of ground to cover before we get there!

Grayland, WA - The Tour - Part One

After eating breakfast and driving around the area looking at cranberry bogs, we met Mabel, our Realtor at the Sea Spray Motel. She was pretty much as we'd pictured, a slightly older lady, friendly, and nice, but somewhat biased and set in her ways. Immediately, we could see that she was surprised by our ages. I'm 30 and my wife is 24, and we look young, Our age would continue to be a problem as our search continued, and that day we could see that she hadn't anticipated our youthfulness. She was very friendly though, and it was nice to finally put a face to the voice online. Mabel also handed us a card, featuring her picture holding a couple of cute little dogs, which was both a shameless advertising ploy on her part, and yet still utterly fitting for her to have on the cards.



Having checked out the Motel, we were pretty anxious to get the show on the road.
The Sea Spray Motel consists of 11 structures, with 9 individual 1 bedroom cabins, and one duplex, as well as an owners residence/office. The property is 1.2 acres in size, and is on the corner of the main road through Grayland and the main beach access there, which is utterly perfect! Online, the motel is posted as having ocean frontage as well, though that clearly was not the case upon arriving, as there was roughly 4 blocks to the beach, and in between there were plots of land for sale, but it was still in a great spot for a motel.

Naturally, the manager was being incredibly difficult. He would only allow us to look in certain cabins, and Mabel was reluctant to push him, so we reluctantly agreed to look at the ones allowed and the office/residence. It was pretty apparent from the start that the motel had once been cared for. The cabins were cute, and had a lot of character, and were decorated pretty whimsically from the outside. Unfortunately, as we started looking around inside, it became clear that at one time, the owners had started decorating and painting it, and as the owner became ill and the manager took over, that stopped, and things were left either poorly painted, half finished, or just made up enough to get by.Colors were all over the place, ugly hotel bedspreads mixed with clashing sofas and paintings...

"vintage" appliances and tile right out of a 50's nuclear disaster readiness film...

and where they had attempted to add some decor, it was badly waterstained posters and glued together puzzles, hung without regards to the other things in the room.
The walls were amazing too, odd colors, often painted over old paneling, and poorly patched with colors roughly matching...


Clearly, this should have been a clear sign that the Sea Spray Motel was an R.O.U.S. - then again, we'd essentially ignored the previous Rodents Of Unusual Size associated with the venture, the inefficient Realtor, the utterly unprepared and clueless owners, the surly and uncooperative manager, and like those, we ignored this stuff, after all it was all cosmetic, and could be easily fixed with some elbow grease and LOTS of paint. We still really liked the Sea Spray! It had a lot of character, and a lot of potential!



Then we toured the grounds and office.......

Book Review - SAHARA by Clive Cussler

SAHARA by Clive Cussler
1993 568pgs

I bought this book at a thrift store sometime this summer, thinking it would be a perfect Beach Read style of book, and then forgot I bought it and never read it. Clive Cussler has a pretty good pile of books under his belt, and all of them are known for being rootin'-tootin' shoot 'em up thrillers, with big locations, bigger characters, and even bigger explosions.

This was my first exposure to Cussler, and unfortunately I wasn't too impressed. The story concerns a deadly red tide that, being fed by a mysterious chemical pollutant stemming from the Sahara Desert, threatens all life on earth, so Dirk Pitt, buff, brilliant, scientist/military mastermind leads a team into the desert illegally to discover the source. Along the way he finds a beautiful scientist, a evil warlord, a wicked french businessman, gold mines, a Civil War boat, an Australian pilot, and a prospector named Clive Cussler.

Now really, as ludicrous as the plot was, with all it entailed, the odd choice of naming the prospector after himself was the most annoying to me, the rest were all played out pretty well, and I did find the book pretty fun. I just don't understand why he chose to do that. Sahara is definitely one to just turn your mind off and let loose with, and I think if I re-read this in the summer on a beach, I'd probably rate it higher, but in the middle of a huge snowstorm, slightly grumpy about Christmas, it didn't catch my attention very well.

That said, I paid $.50 for it, and it was a decent enough way to pass a couple of evenings. If I found any more of his books for sale cheap, I'd probably give them a go too.

4/10

Now Reading - The Loch by Steve Alten

January 1st, 2009

I've got a good feeling about 2009.

May all of your hopes and dreams be fullfilled for the new year, full of pleasant surprises, opportunities taken, and dreams come true!

Grayland, WA

We arrived in Grayland well after nightfall. It was actually a beautiful drive, cruising along the coast of Washington, the ocean audible beyond the lush greenery, the rain drizzling down, with beams from the lighthouse cutting through the sky.

When we reached Grayland, naturally, the first thing we did was scope out the reason we'd come, the Sea Spray Motel,* and from what little we could see in the dark, we liked.

As this trip was being performed on the cheap, we didn't have any lodging lined out, planning to sleep in Strontium, like we had on a previous trip to the coast. Sleeping in the back of a Honda Element is amazingly comfortable, after some trial and error on our first trip. I'm around 6'2" and have the proportions of a yeti, and my wife is just over 5' and quite small, but we've created a pretty nice little setup for sleeping in the rig. We have an inflatable twin mattress that runs on a little battery pump, and we leave it laid out in the bottom of the Element. Then, layered on top of that is a full size pillowtop mattress cover, plenty of blankets, and around 6 pillows. Then we just pile our luggage and cooler on top of that. When it comes time to bed down, all we have to do is slide the seats forward, stack our luggage in the driver's and passenger's seats, inflate the mattress, and tuck the pillows into the odd crevices around the doors. I was shocked how comfortable this was the first time we did it, and it's incerdibly nice to be able to just pull to a dark place, inflate, and sleep. We've slept behind Safeways, in isolated campsites, construction zones, on the sides of roads and hotel parking lots, all with little to no problem. The first time we used Strontium like this, we made neat little cardboard and cloth window covers, which were nice, but a huge pain. For this trip, we just went bare windowed, and hoped no one wanted to peek in. Eventually, I plan to come up with some sort of clever window covering system, but for now it seems like we do a pretty good job of fogging up the windows by sleeping in it!

Anyway... we drove around the area for a while looking for somewhere to sleep, and were shocked to discover the campground, which had well over a hundred spots, full up! Eventually, we just found a dark, semi-private road, and parked on the side for the night.

Camping, Element-Style!

The next morning, we headed to the beach, desperate to see the ocean, and walk off some of the nervous energy we had. The first thing we noticed, was something we'd forgotten, that you can drive on Washington beaches. This is something we are not fans of. Lindsay and I are usually the people giving you dirty looks as you cruise past us on your four wheelers and dirtbikes on the trails of Idaho, and we figured that the beaches of Washington would be no different.
Luckily, even with tire tracks, the beach was gorgeous. Grayland is part of the Cranberry Coast, and they have 18 miles of beach. The beaches in Washington are a different breed, very cool and stromy, they definetly have a different feel to them than beaches in Oregon and California. More of an untamed, rebellious ocean. We loved it.

An old stump on the beach in Grayland, WA

After wandering on the beach for a while, we ate some decadently greasy chicken fried steak at the Local Bar, and drove around Grayland, finding it intriguing how many vacation houses were for sale, and how many other houses seemed to be slowly melting into the land. The cranberry bogs were also very unique, and we've sworn to eventually find out more about them, and hit a harvest, because they're very odd, and cool.

Eventually, it was time to meet Mabel, and take a tour of the motel... A place we were really hoping would become ours, especially after the charming morning we'd spent in Grayland!

The Sea Spray Motel* (Not it's real name)

Movin' Right Along...

We left for Grayland, WA early on August 8th. We planned to enjoy this trip, even if it didn't pan out. It was the first time we'd ever been to the coast in Washington, and we were really looking forward to it! We ate a brief breakfast in Baker City, OR in an unremarkable cafe, (We had hoped to eat at the Prospector's Chocolate Co. but they weren't open yet) and continued on, pushing our way deeper into the gorgeous world of Washington. The winding roads of Washington made driving slow, and we stopped a lot to enjoy ourselves, eating at an awesome little dive bar that may or may not have been called the River Rat in a city whose name I forget.

The Mystery City

After dinner, full of greasy fish and chips, we wound our way up the Washington coast in increasingly dark and stormy conditions until we cruised into Grayland, fairly late in the evening.

Waiting for the other shoe...

Supposedly, for the last 3 days, Pocatello was to be in the grip of a winter storm so frightening in it's magnitude that the city could grind to a halt, civilization would begin to degrade, and only those with snowshoes and sled dogs would prevail.

Thus far, all we've received is lots of wind. Which, as all Pocatellans and Chubbuckians learn in grade school, is because Idaho Falls sucks, and Utah blows. In fact, walking to my car, Strontium after work tonight, the winter air seemed downright balmy!

That said, it wouldn't faze me one bit to wake up and see 2 feet of new snow and 20 foot drifts in the morning. In fact, being off work for the next two days, I'd welcome the chance to curl up with a blanket and some coffee and try to finish slogging through the Clive Cussler book I picked up at the thrift store last week...

More storms on Christmas day here, we got roughly another foot, with a lot more drifting this time...

Here's our little garden owl before Christmas...

and after... He is to the left of the lizard.




Clearly, the Oregon Rain Man sculpture we have despises winter in Idaho...

Winter In Idaho

I really love snow. I know some people don't, but for some reason, whenever we get a storm, especially one like today, where it was primarily just nice drifting flakes, I love it.
Even when it involves shoveling a foot of snow off of the walks....


It's just so pretty. That said, it would be a lot easier if I didn't have to drive in it, and could just spend the whole day curled up with a blanket, a good book, some hot cocoa and the new Ray Lamontagne CD....

Movie Review - The Thing (1982)

I had planned to watch and review a Christmas movie here tonight. I had a few hours of downtime that I was going to use to dig through some old magazines in the hopes of condensing some boxes, and watch a good old fashioned holiday film... Apparently, I'm still in Scrooge mode, 'cause John Carpenter's The Thing grabbed at me from the shelf with a long, flailing, tentacle and wouldn't let go. Maybe it's the foot of snow that we've received in the last 24 hours, or something, but I suddenly found myself in the mood for a good old fashioned claustrophobic horror film instead!

The Thing is possibly one of the best horror flicks ever made. It stars a bearded Kurt Russel in angry bearded man mode, as part of a crew of researchers in a remote antarctic base. They've been there for a while, and it seems like they've all fallen into a comfortable, if slightly burnt out and annoyed groove. Then out of the stormy sky, a helicopter appears, chasing and shooting at a dog. Flying in close and fast, the bird touches down, a masked and desperate man shooting at the dog as the inhabitants of the base come out to watch. Even as one man fumbles a grenade and blows the chopper, the other starts shooting and chasing the dog, desperate to kill it, and speaking a foreign language. After winging one of the men in the base, the foreigner is shot and killed. Then things get creepy.

The crew discover that the helicopter and men belong to a base of Norwegians, based a distance away, and they go to investigate the base. MacReady (Russel) and the doctor find the base in ruins, the entire crew dead, and a mass of charred multi-limbed flesh in a pile. They quickly gather up some of the papers and videos, along with the remains, and hightail it back to their base. Soon enough, the men discover that the Norweigans had found and exhumed an alien space ship, buried for thousands of years, and that with it, they'd unleashed an alien. A horrible, shape shifting monster that can take the form of any creature, man or beast.

In any other movie, this would spell a certain sequence of events; Men get taken over, lots of shooting, one of 'em gets deformed and evil and starts killing everyone, a girl takes her shirt off for no reason, explosions increase at the same speed as ludicrous plot development until finally the marines arrive with a hero that saves everyone.

Instead, in this movie, it gets tighter and claustrophobic. None of the crew know who is and who isn't infected, they don't know who to trust. Stranded in a huge storm in freezing temperatures with no radio contact and no escape, the men of the base begin to break down, distrust runs rampant, and slowly, the creature begins to take their places.

Filmed before digital effects, the creature in The Thing is both amazing and disgusting, an animatronic configuration of limbs, slime, insect parts, bones, teeth, tentacles and whatever form the creature took over. It's amazing, quite frankly, and something that, if done today, would be shoddily animated and lose a lot of the horror you feel as it moves on the screen. Yet somehow, as effective and disgusting as the creature is, the real horror in the movie comes from the humans themselves as they break down under the pressure, distrusting and fighting each other, surrounded by miles of sub-zero temperatures, with no escape in sight.

The Thing is an amazing film, and I dare anyone to watch it at night with the lights off, the snow piling up outside, and not get a bit creeped out. Or a lot. Especially if you have pets that like to jump on you without warning for no reason.... Highly recommended.

10/10

Meet Savannah!

She seems to be adjusting well to life at my mom's. Bella loves her, and Scout tolerates her with indifference... Which is kind of high praise for her!

A new Kitten!

Tonight, my wife and I gave my mom a new kitten for Christmas. She lost her previous cat, Silk a couple of years ago and had recently asked us to look into a new one, and we decided to go in with some family and get her a new one. We adopted her from the Pocatello Animal Shelter a couple of nights ago, and began acclimating her to our dogs, in the hope that it will translate to hers, which are less than half the size. So far, she loves Ludo.

Mom loves her, and we plan to drop the as-yet-unnamed kitten off at her new home tomorrow morning!

It's finally kind of starting to feel like Christmas for me! (I've been a bit of a scrooge this year...)

In Preparation

A week passed. On Mabel's end, no news. The family was hard to get a hold of, the Listing Realtor, it seemed, had inherited the listing, and knew virtually nothing about it, the manager was very uncooperative, and our Realtor was seemingly unwilling to push any of them to get the info we needed.

On our end, we began investigating the property heavily, using any and all online sources available to us. Starting with a google search for images, and going so far as to emailing the Chamber of Commerce, and the Cranberry museum in Grayland, WA. The Motel had virtually no presence online, the homepage was a simple page, with one link to events in the area, and one link to a few more pictures of the cabins, they didn't even have any online ordering, just an address and a phone number. Outside of what we could find there, the information we found was intriguing though. While it was listed as being 11 cabins with ocean frontage, from what we could find in pictures, it was actually 8 separate cabins, one duplex, and the owners house/shop/office. It was on 1.2 acres, and from Google earth's vantage appeared to be the closest building to the ocean, but certainly not ocean front. We started conversations with the Chamber of Commerce and the Cranberry Museum there, primarily trying to find out people's opinions of the Motel, and then try and delve into the history of the place. We're both big history fans, Lindsay is a History Major from the University Of Montana, and I have a lot of interest as well, and we had plans to decorate one of the cabins with the history of the motel in mind.

Surprisingly, we learned that most of the residents of Grayland were imports, and the Chamber had no idea who we would even begin to talk to in order to learn more about the history or to find old photographs. For the time being, we just kind of filed it away, something to look into deeper after we got the place. The people we connected with were very friendly however, and we chatted off and on while we prepped for our visit. One thing we did learn was that the Motel was considered poorly run. That actually gave us hope, but in retrospect, should have made us nervous as well...

A Headlong Leap.

Deciding to take a chance, we contacted our Realtor here in Pocatello, Jared, who found us a Realtor out in the area, contacted her and let her know we were interested. The first thing we were surprised to discover, is that a lot of Realtors move at a glacial pace. Jared, and everyone we'd dealt with previously at our local business have been energetic, friendly, up with the latest tech, and just absolutely amazing to work with, and we'd assumed the same would be the case in Washington. Apparently, email is something fairly foreign there. If we wanted to get ahold of our new Realtor, Mabel (Name changed) we found ourselves needing to call, and usually leave a message a couple of times, and the listing agent for the Motel was even worse, often deleting emails unread. It seemed odd to us that a tool like the internet and email would be so quickly discounted out of hand by these Realtors!

At any rate, we dove in, asking to see occupancy data, and asking the usual questions; days on market, date built, why the owners were selling, etc... Some of the information came back quickly, and the rest would never really be answered...

It turned out, the owner who had the same name as our Realtor, Mabel, was very ill, and that was why they were selling, and had been trying to sell for almost 2 years. They has bought it for her to run, and shortly thereafter, she fell ill and they hired a manager to live in, and run the place. This made us excited, adding fuel to the fire. They seemed desperate to sell, no longer ran the place, and had been trying to sell for quite some time! They were also willing to carry the loan, something very favorable to us, while we have good credit, we didn't have any real money for a down payment. Somehow, in the excitement, we kind of overlooked the lack of any occupancy data, income numbers, or any real effort on the part of the Realtors or owners. We realized that we had a few days off together in a few weeks, and asked Mabel to get us the data while we planned to come out and visit the property...

Diving In

Okay, back on track...

When Lindsay got home that night, I prefaced showing her the property. "Don't get excited, I just thought it looked intriguing, that's all." I then showed her a property listing for a 10 cabin motel with owner's house on 1.2 acres roughly 2 blocks from the ocean, in Grayland WA. Withing 5 minutes, we were in love and wanted to try for it, all of our careful plans be damned!

Christmas Card Outtakes II

Clearly, Our cats are no easier to photograph than the dogs... Especially with the dogs in the same room!

Christmas Card Outtakes

Being semi-responsible adults, Lindsay and I have decided to do Christmas Cards this year, primarily as a way to keep in touch with our families that are slowly drifting further afield. As part of that idea, I was left to take a photo of the dogs for the card while she was at work tonight.

This turned out to be much easier said than done, as both boys were very rambunctious and obnoxious. It did, however result in some great outtakes!


Needless to say, the photo of the cats is going to wait until she gets home!

Electronic Billboards

In Pocatello, the hot new advertising product seems to be color electronic billboards. There's a few around town, in varying sizes and quality, one of the nicest being by the new Costco, and typically advertising a realty company featuring a lady with a lion-like mane of hair, the local college football team- the Bengals, and the Lingerie shop in town. (Lions, Tigers & Bare - Oh My!) Most of these are kind of decent, with cheesy animations and generic billboard ads.

However, on the drive home after working in Idaho Falls this evening, there were 2 new electronic billboards running, and if I hadn't been in a hurry, I would have found a big rock to throw. All of the boards in town are in fairly populated areas, plenty of ambient lights around, but these new ones are in the middle of nowhere in fields along the sides of the interstate. For these billboards to function in the daylight, they have a fairly high light output, and at night, while in a populated area, they still look decent. However, on the side of the road, with no other lights around these new ones are like a half dozen semis bearing down on you, high beams on, somehow coordinating them to form a dancing animated Santa Claus that proceeds to tap dance into your retinas, permanently scarring them. They really need to install some sort of Day/Night modes on these where they drop the light output at night. I watched 6 cars swerve madly as the picture on the billboard changed and their eyes were unable to deal with the spotlight beam. They flashed a number to call to advertise with them, but my eyes were watering too badly to read it.

Sometimes I despise technology.

This concludes my rant. Off to swaddle my eyeballs in bandages.

The Search

It turns out, that unlike searching for houses, finding commercial properties on the internet is fairly difficult. There are a lot of sites out there that sell it, but on each one they require you to open an account, or pay for access, or sign over your first born son, or accept email offers to view their listings. If you're looking for a resort or large hotel to buy, your options are almost limitless, there are amazing amounts of properties in the 1.5-6 million dollar range out there.

For our needs, I was able to find a few sites that were mostly effective. As far as bang for your buck, www.Loopnet.com easily has the largest selection of listings, but to see the basic ones, you have to sign up, and a large portion of the listings are hidden even then unless you pay. Craigslist also has a pretty good selection of businesses listed, but you have to slog through a lot of other stuff cluttering up the listings to find them. Hint - When searching Craigslist, make sure you go into the separate categories, then use the search function. Searching on the main page for the area will rarely bring you any accurate results. Also, say you are looking for a place in mideastern Oregon, make sure to search the more metropolitan areas listings too, a lot of sellers will put their listing there, hoping for more exposure.

I spent 3 nights surfing the internet, just compiling likely search pages, and teaching myself the tricks to finding properties, as well as learning the lingo. On the third night, I started actually looking for a property that we could afford, that had everything we were looking for.

The thirty-third property in, I found a place that got us so excited, we forgot a lot of the promises we'd made to ourselves about the search, one that would ultimately guide us in the right direction, and teach us a lot of things along the way, especially about disappointment, cynicism, & never letting hope die....