The Land
We have already told you a little bit about the Lost River Valley in previous posts, and we will do more to highlight Wardensville, Mathias, and other nearby Wild and Wonderful locations. Let’s talk a little bit about our land in this post, and about why we picked this location. We drove to hundreds (not even kidding) of various properties for sale in the middle of winter (yes, on very snowy and icy roads, an adventure slash learning experience in itself.)
We saw properties that were wide and flat, properties that were part of HOA and had foundations and all utilities set up, properties that were adjacent to farms, properties that were way out and required 4 x 4 to get to, properties that were… oh you name it. We saw those suckers.
We had a few criteria for our future parcel:
- No HOA – they wouldn’t let us build 10 different dwellings on one parcel, that’s for sure, or establish a resort. With a wistful sigh, that removed most of the Trout Pond properties from our list and map, since a majority of those are HOA-run.
- A view. Many lovely hilly valley properties tempted us but lacked a view.
- Location. We didn’t want to be too far from a major road (lesson learned from the winter surveys)
- Space and trees. We wanted a good amount of acreage and LOTS of trees. Some of the properties were grassy. No bueno.
From the first time we saw the listing for Jenkins Hollow Road, we all agreed it looked promising. At the intersection of a major street leading to the Lost River State Park less than 3 miles away, we peered at Google Maps which showed that the property was pretty much a giant mountain towering over the valley. As we later found, elevation does make for challenging building.
We visited when snow was on the ground, and the road was pretty much un-drive-able even with our AWD Subaru Outback… I (Jane) didn’t have shoes that would handle the snowy incline well (learning experience again), so my wife scrambled to the top of the hill and took a few videos. The videos showed a gushing natural spring, beautiful vistas, and lots and lots of trees. We were sold.
Based on those videos, we decided to purchase the property and never looked back. Until now, anyway.