The Long Way Home

First, a quick explanation. 

In May we found a house with property we both liked and put an offer in. After their first counter, where they only offered $900 less (yes, only $900) we made another offer for $5000 less than their list price and I'm sure their realtor basically twisted their arm and they accepted.

We went through all the inspections and made a few adjustments in our requests. We weren't asking for the moon but they said no to everything but what was required by law (CO2 detector and a flap that goes on the septic tank to prevent back flow). We asked for a one year home warranty, mid range price, and they said no! We were getting a little frustrated with them at this point. Then our realtor got with their realtor and they agreed to split the cost between the two of them (it was $435). 

Then we were just waiting for the appraisal for the bank loan. It came in at $10,000 less than our agreed upon sale price. Good for us, right? Not really. We sent an addendum for them to adjust the sale price to the appraised price. They said no.

That meant if we wanted the sale to continue we would have to come up with the extra $10,000 in cash. It wasn't that we didn't have it, but we wanted to use that cash and a little more to build a garage and put in a mare motel (despite the name it really is just an open covered pipe "barn").

They never offered to split the difference, never offered to get a new appraisal or split the cost for it ($600). Never offered any suggestions to help the sale go through. After their flat out refusal to work with us we decided to walk away. I mean, seriously!

So now we are out $1600 from all the inspections and we are back to looking. 

I found a house that looked interesting but it was in Myrtle Point, about an hour and a half away, near the coast. What the heck, we decided to do a drive by and maybe have lunch.

On the way we passed by the Sandy Creek Covered Bridge. We had to stop for some photos.

Obviously not in use as a means to crossing the creek anymore, but it has been fixed into a picnic park area. It's too bad some people are total pigs and feel the need to vandalize nice things with graffiti. 

This is what it looks like from the road.

The house was different. It was kind of a compound of similar looking structures. While the land was not bad the whole thing had a few strikes against it to us. Number one was that it was in a flood zone, and also it was on a spring for water. I know other people do just fine with that but to us it's a total unknown so we just aren't sure about it. 

Time to go on and head for the beach and lunch. We thought the road continued around in a big loop and hooked back in to the main highway. Well, it didn't. 

We decided at that point to continue on and see where it led us.

It followed the Coquille River and I just had to stop and take a picture of this little falls.

These were giant boulders in the river.

We passed a sign that said Roseburg was 36 miles away. I was getting confused and I was sure it meant a different Roseburg. This is a gravel road. For 36 miles! Well we carried on.

Then we found this beautiful falls. We looked later for the name and it doesn't have a name. This is just either the upper or lower falls on the Coquille River.

Pretty!

Another view.

The whole road was in a steep canyon with sheer walls on either side.

The walls were covered with ferns. These had a lot of dust from the road on them.

Thick with ferns!

We finally got to the paved road again and then we knew where we were. We had gone from Sitkum Lane in Myrtle Point to Coos Bay Wagon Road in Roseburg. At one point I was convinced we were going to pop out in Portland!!

 

We passed a new logging operation. They had shut down for the day maybe 30 minutes before we got there. (They have to stop at 1pm.)

The loggers were all standing around talking near a trailer that's just out of this picture on the left. They gave us a hard look when we stopped and I stuck my camera out the window. 

After all that we ended up having lunch (linner at that point!) back at home.

The funny thing was on some of our little drives around the area we would go down Coos Bay Wagon Road until it turned into the gravel road, then we would turn around and head back. Now we know where it goes. And for a gravel road it really isn't bad at all. In fact it is quite a pretty drive.