Adventures in our Motorhome - 2012 Blog

May 1, 2012

Homebase at the Beach? Probably not!

Our memories of the ocean will linger on long after our footprints in the sand are gone.


beachie1_12
One of many trails to the beach.

Remember we sold our little cabin and our home base?  There’s just something about having a little piece of property that you can do something with or maybe not even do anything with at all.  We’ve not been without a little hunk of dirt to even plant a flower much in our lives.  Are we going through withdrawal?  Then, of course, there is that other question we keep asking ourselves.  Did we goof?  Maybe we should have kept the cabin just because we could. However, that train of thought is too late.  We know we shouldn’t have kept it because we didn’t use it  much.  Oh … the little turmoil going around inside us!

beachie1_3  
Duchess loves the sand and the beach.


I love beaches.  Duchess loves beaches too.  Having grown up in Port Angeles, WA, I love the salt water and the salt air.  Well, I also love creeks, lakes and rivers.  You get the drift I am sure.  With that in mind we made a trip to the coast --  a mere 75 miles away.  We were going to look around and check it out.  We certainly didn’t want a building lot.  We only wanted a recreation lot for a few weeks here and there during the summer.  That was the original intent but boy, did we get an education!!  Actually part of this education was something we already knew.  People just don’t want RVs moving in next door.  Not only the neighborhoods have their rules but also the cities and counties are at work with regulations to keep us away.  They think we belong in organized parks.  We know that isn’t where we always want to be.

beachie1_9
One of the first lots we saw was on a canal.  I wondered about mosquitoes here.

We weren’t looking for a permanent place.  We were just looking for something we could use while we’re playing but definitely something that could be sold in a few years.  We looked at several lots just a few steps from the beach trails.  We loved a couple of the lots.  However, coastal properties have flooding issues, septic issues, RV issues and neighbor issues.  Sure you could put the RV some places up to 30 days but if you had a guest RV, they could only stay 7 days before having to move.  Now most of the properties didn’t have full time neighbors so there probably wouldn’t be many problems with that.  However, easements, building restrictions, drain fields and septics could be very expensive for the little time we wanted to stay.

beachie1_6
I liked the bench and the ocean view.


We also looked at canal lots at the beach and even one grand 5 acre parcel.  What a joy it would be to tear through your own property on the ATVs but the coast has a lot of marsh land and we found plenty of that there.  We had one very favorite lot but moved on and changed what we looked for.  Next we found property a couple miles from the beach with a good sized pole barn and two RV hookups.  Terry wanted it.  However, it was in a typical established neighborhood so out it went.

beach1
This was one of my favorite locations since it was just two houses in from the beach trail.

We’ve come to the conclusion maybe a home base at the beach isn’t such a good idea.  Maybe it just isn’t for us.  We don’t want the neighbors to hate us.   We don’t want to deal with floods and CC&R’s.  So, after several trips in that direction and numerous properties we have checked off, we decided maybe just a piece of land closer to the kids might be better but that’s not even as easy as we thought.  Maybe no property at all is best.  We have a sign though and we need someplace to put our sign.


beachie1_4
We couldn't get the owner to call us back on this lot that backed the canal.  We had no idea the cost or details.

Maybe we just need a vacation!! 

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
barn
Terry wanted this at first.  Two RV hookups, two miles from the beach and a pole barn ... but there were really close neighbors in a real neighborhood but we really liked it.



‘Tis life on the road.