October 15, 2009 – Recapping Continued

While we had rain in Wytheville and rain on the drive to Asheville, our first morning there, while wet, wasn’t raining. We drove back towards Hickory using the secondary roads. You get a much better feel for the countryside when you tool through the small towns, see the shops and the dumps. Morganton seemed like a pleasant place as we drove through. We assumed we could stop there for a while on the way back.

Hickory has a little old town area which has been nicely restored and given ample parking. We stopped there to take a walk around. I found a Real Estate brochure and began to peruse it while Carol purchased some ice cream for us. There was an interesting little house on three acres. A quick phone call and yes, we could see it. So we were off to Lenoir, about 30 miles northwest of Hickory.

The house was built long enough ago that the floors sloped in a couple of areas. The two bedrooms were off one side of the living room, while the full bath was off the other side. Carol wasn’t impressed with the single wide trailer sitting on the adjacent lot. Looking at the aerial view with the plot lines drawn in, the property was somewhat similar to geometry problem. You have 2 minutes to find the surface area of a twelve sided figure where no two straight lines are parallel, or the same length. But the agent had a couple of other listings she thought we might like to see and she would e-mail them to us.

Lenoir is not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway so we elected to do a little “leaf peeping” on the way home. The parkway was busy with traffic. Many of the overlooks have now become “over growns” as the foliage has thicken to block any view that may have existed. But, people stop regardless. Some times the overlooks are also trail heads, which explains the parked cars with no one in sight.

Driving back to Lenoir the next day was accomplished in the rain. It had rained most of the night and continued to rain all day. We met the agent at the house. Another older home, built in 1949, it had been renovated both inside and out. The interior was open, with a couple of quirky little rooms that served as bedrooms. Carol and I really liked the house, knowing there would be some things we would want to do to it right away. It sat on 5+ acres with a small pond and a creek. The property ran to the top of a ridge and was heavily wooded. There was no garage, a definite negative.

Later, after discussion “things” with the agent at her office, we returned to the property for another looksee. We really liked the lot, but the more I looked at the way the outside of the house had been renovated, the more discouraged I became. It was just shoddy. On the way back to the coach, we pretty much talked ourselves out of trying to do anything quickly. Returning to our original plan, we just want to find a place we like; not buy a place while on this trip.