Since we were going to be road tripping already, we threw in a little detour to 'Gravity Hill', located in Prosser. Many places stake a claim to having a 'gravity hill'...an area where you can put you car in neutral, and all your senses tell you you are rolling uphill. It was pretty neat...it really did feel like you were rolling 'uphill'. I'm not sure I would make the 4 hour drive from Seattle to experience it..but it was easily worth a half-hour detour.
Our primary goal for the day was driving down to the town of Bickleton, to look at a piece of property that had held our interest for a while: This nice looking 20 acres with a yurt. While we were not able to locate the actual property in question, there were several other parcels of land in the area that looked nice, and were priced similarly to this, and, the trip was still worth the drive...this was a part of the state neither my wife or I had been to before, and so I was very curious what it was like. I like it a lot...it's in the eastern foothills of the Cascades, and reminds me a lot of what you would find around Natchez or Ellensburg.
Having talked things over a bit, my wife and I are both comfortable making the decision to buy vacation/bug-out now, even if it means that we may keep renting for another 18-24 months while we build our saving back up again. The only real problem is that I am not sure if jumping into buying property is the right thing to do at this juncture...this juncture being we still have a house on the market. My big concern is that we go buy this property, and then we get an offer on our house that is for sale, and we find out during inspections that something heinous will need fixing to actually sell the house...and so...I'm a scaredy pants right now.
Instead of doubling back from Bickleton, we took a big loop, going south into Goldendale, then back up through Satus Pass(3100 feet) to Yakima, before hitting Prosser again for dinner, then coming home. Because it was April, and we were driving through a Mountain Pass...we did get to see some snow coming down. Yay! But, the kids got a kick out of it.. The kids(and the parents) also liked dinner. We stopped at the Whitstran Brewing Company's Brewpub, and it was very tasty. It probably deserves it's own review.
The only real negative from the day was the fact that the round-trip burned $80 worth of gas...but, even if the rest of the day had been miserable, finding myself at this cross-roads would have made it all worth while:
At this point, I think it's a good investment to get an inspection on your house. A buyer will probably want one of their own, but you'll know the (probably not) ugly truth, and it will be a selling point.
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