Everything comes at a price...

We all know that in life nothing is for free and usually there is some type of price to pay for what we're looking for. I have paid that price. Been to the mountain and back as one could say. Except I mean that literaly. Last weekend we went to the mountains, now we're back.

Friday morning we got up before the butt crack of dawn, more like the middle of the night, 3:00am to depart for our journey. We actually got off without a hitch, and even considering my husbands cronic tardiness, we were only fifteen minutes late (I run on a very strict schedule). We took my car and I drove us out of Florida and thru Georgia. I let Ray take over when we hit Alabama, and boy was I glad. I wasn't too tired from driving - apparently, unbeknownst to me, Alabama's highway passes thru a series of mountains. I may as well interject now that I have an really bad fear of heights. Even looking up at mountains gets me a little nervous. We made it thru (I looked at my feet ALOT), of course thanks to my expert timing we missed out on rush hour in all the major cities, and we went thru a few, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis. Just as we're getting into Little Rock, we start to hit some weather, what we thought was a thunderstorm (when we got to our hotel and saw the tornado warnings I shit). So we called it quits for the night, we had wanted to get another hour past but were tired and pulled into the next biggest town, Conway. Much to our suprise, Conway had a decent sized mall and was pretty bustling. I'm not sure what we were expecting, scarecrows and hillbillys I guess (the hillbillies come later). We set up camp at some overpriced dump Best Western (because of it's proximity to what looked like a really good home-style restaurant). It was still resonably early in the evening, six or seven, so we lined up the realtors for the next day, to tired to eat and passed out.

Saturday morning the adventure began, but not before the best breakfast I ever ate. We figured we had better eat a good breakfast since we didn't know when the next time we'd get to stop would be (we were on a very tight schedlue, with what seemed like a million miles to drive in between appointments). I have to throw this in, I ordered the 'Louisianna Purchase' - to die for - big pile of hash browns with cheese, sausage, ham, eggs and bacon on top, all piled up - a chunky girl's mountain of glory. Raymond, a notorious diner lover, had to get a short stack with his already huge plate of food, quite possibly both the biggest and the best pancakes either of us have ever had - he, who doesn't cook except for pancakes - actually asked them for their secret recipe.

We head down the road, with our bellies full and our minds racing with excitement of what we're about to see.
We were meeting with two realtors on Saturday and seeing three properties, then Sunday one realtor was showing us three properties in a different part of the state.

Realtor #1 (I call him that only because he was first, not best), Jim, from Clinton (my 2nd favorite president). Well, to start out, thanks to Jim's awful directions, we drove plumb past Jim's office by about ten miles before we decided to stop and call him back and question his directions to his office (he said his office was accross the street from a dinosaur - I was driving and that left Ray to navigate, Ray was looking for a tyranasaurus and it was a stegalosaurus that Jim was referring to - duh). We all caught up and he picked us up (in his smelly man-jeep). Jim probably should have eaten less garlic the night before and maybe want to consider washing up a little better before meeting with clients. Now, Jim was aware that we were meeting someone else that afternoon and we were on a fairly tight schedule (he was only showing us one property). However, he insisted on driving us around the town where the listing was, which, was practicaly abandoned. You know its a small town when they have one school for K thru 12. He was kind enought to drive us out of the way to take us over some barely-there hundred year old railroad bridge, which I didn't really appreciate. And we were finally on our way up to the house, 45 minutes after his 'tour' began. When Jim had described the property on the phone he had said that it was a mile or so down a gravel road that was maintained by the county - I asked several times about the road. The gravel road was more like a clay path, complete with hairpin turns and plenty of cliff views and steep inclines only passable with four wheel drive. The houses, custom built (by the looks of it, by hand and not very well) were right on a cliff - not near, like fall off the balcony down the cliff - on the cliff. In the kitchens Jim pointed out that there were no drawers, only cabinets - where do you put the silverware?? In Jim's description of the houses he said that the foundation beams were telephone poles, and how sturdy they were. In reality, the 'foundation' was sitting on top of the rock cliff, not secured into the ground in any way. Now just how long do you think it will take for the whole thing to slide down the mountain? Needless to say, we won't be in it when it does. We vetoed this place, hands down and were trying to get Jim to get us out of there as fast, and safely as humanly possible after Jim had consumed most of our morning. Thanks Jim, but no thanks.

Our next appointment was with a sweet cowgirl named Kim. Kim took us up the mountain to see one property - that was inhabited by a tenant - who she said we should be 'on the look out for' - this set off my hillbilly radar immediately, but we avoided any confrontation, the tenant wasn't home - but Kim does carry a gun in her car just in case (Ray told me that part later, apparently you always have to be prepared for whatever). Again, up the mountain was a bit too much for me. Any time you look out the window of the car and see straight down, it's never good in my book.
Down the mountain we went, to the next listing. This place was almost ours. The people who had bought it were from California and had done a bunch of fixing up to the land, but hadn't gotten to the house yet. They had put in really nice landscaping around the ponds and the most expensive fencing I think you can buy, fruit trees with irrigation already programmed on timers. The house was neat, fix-up-able, sizable and the land was really nice. OH, did I mention that she was offering the miniatures horses that lived there for sale with the property - I love minis - and he'll never admit to it, but Ray does too. The homeowner was there, which was a little sad because the reason they hadn't gotten to fixing up the house was that her husband had died shortly after they puchased the property. Kim was nice, a definate Arkansas afficianado. She dropped us back at the hotel we had met at and we traded e-mails and parted ways.

That night we were pooped again, seeing those three properties took us all day, so we just stayed at the hotel that we met up with Kim at since we were already there. Ray had wanted to drive accross the state to the West and try to see one property (that we couldn't afford) at 7 am. Vetoed. The best part about the hotel was that it had a restaurant and a bar, something for each of us. After all this time on the road and negotiating (arguing without curse words) with Ray, I was ready for a martini, a strong one. We dumped our stuff in the room - which was getting easier each day because Ray saw a piece on TV about bed bugs the day before we left, and was sorting things by clean - things we brought that hadn't touched anything but the inside of the suitcase and possibly contaminated - things that touched any part of the hotel room, so the suitcase was getting lighter every night although we were running out of plastic bags for the contaminents. We hit the bar for cocktails before we dined, which we didn't realize was a private 'smoking' club - in Arkansas I guess that means bar - because in order to get a drink, I had to join the club - of course they had membership dues and got me for an extra five bucks just to get served. From the waitress I learned that we were in a dry county, I would soon find out one of many in Arkansas. We tried to blend and route for the razorbacks like everyone else. Eventually we crawled to the restaurant, then back to our rooms for another night of coma-like slumber. It really was exhausting doing all that traveling.

Sunday morning we claimed our complimentary breakfast and took our complimentary cups of coffee on the road for our last realtor appointment. Angie, from Pocahontas. En route to meet up with Angie, we nixed one of the four properties we had initially requested to see, the highest priced one that we really couldn't afford, we were getting pretty tired.
It was a two to three hour drive to Angie's office in Pocahontas, and on the way we almost cancelled completely. The roads to Pocahontas were flat, easy driving, even plesant, but we were getting concerned about being in 'tornado alley'. But we pressed onward and made it to her office without even getting lost - and were early!
Angie proceeds to take us to our first stop, a gorgeous remodeled home on a hillside - not mountain, with lots of wooded acreage - that's what Ray likes, wooded. The best part about this property is that it was the least expensive one that we saw! Ok, that wasn't the best part, the best part was the house that didn't need any fixing up.

The second property we went to see that day was at Ray's request only. After I saw the pictures of this one on the internet I told him already that I wasn't interested. When they don't show any photos of the inside of the home, you know you're due to be disappointed, and I am not interested in building or fixing up. This one had the most land, 220 acres, and the worst house, a brick, three bedroom, one bath, that had a gravel pit (a big one) right behind the house. When we showed up the wife was suprised to see us, apparently Mr. Gravel Pit forgot to tell her that we were coming. She said that she didn't even have time to make the beds! It was like two o'clock, so I didn't really think that she intended to. When we walked in, the husband was just crawling out of his recliner, buckling his pants (they had been watching football and were in a very relaxed state). So, being the trooper that I am, we proceeded to tour the tiny home. I noticed that there was a washer and drier hook up in the one bathroom, very convenient - if you had a washer and dryer, unlike the current inhabitants. It was a cool day, so they had the wood burning stove going, which under other circumstances may have added to the ambiance, however in this house it just made the already horrid odor smell like baked horrible odor. We poked our heads into each of the three bedrooms, each messier and smellier than the last. If you've ever been in a really, I mean really messy teenager's bedroom, this is what all of the bedrooms were like, of course with the dry heat from the wood stove, they smelled like baked funk, not a great selling point. Ray and I wandered into the dining room, where we both happened to peek out the window and see the son (we assumed, he was youngest of the three), zipping up his camoflage pants. I didn't realize at the time that Ray had seen this too, until we were on our way home and I asked him if he noticed, he did, and we had a good laugh about it. Ray, being the hard ass he is, wasn't content to leave the property after seeing the house, so he made Angie drive us down the easement road (there's an easement road to the graveyard that is on the property, nice). Where the Gravel Pit's had parked their tractor to block the road from hunters coming in and getting the big buck they spotted on the property. Mr. Gravel Pit and son came down to move the tractor, but couldn't get it started. They tried for several moments to jump it with their pick up but to no avail. Angie, being a real trooper herself, offered to walk the mushy property with Ray if he still wanted to see it, and he finally conceeded to leave and go on to the next place. The only thing we could agree on about this property was that they should use that big tractor to push the house into the gravel pit and start all over.

The last property was nice, a definate horse farm, had a house with an in-ground pool and a barn and a workshop too. Two ponds and plenty of electric fence to torture horses with. This place though, the house needed work, and the pool was all closed up for the winter, something I hadn't contemplated having to do - close the pool, I've lived in Florida too long and had thought that the pool was a great idea - from the photos taken in the summer, but being there seeing it all closed up reminded me of what a chore it was. Like I said, the big house needed work, a big turn off. Having worked most of this last year for a general contractor, I don't have much of a desire to do any constructing or remodeling - since that usually takes longer than building a new house. Ray loved the property, rolling hills, plenty of land to ride horses, but as I pointed out to him, he doesn't ride recreationally anyways. He, and Angie thought that this was going to be my favorite by far, but they were wrong.

We headed back to the office where we had left our car and came in to use the facilities. In the next three minutes we decided to make an offer on the first property we saw with Angie, the gorgeous remodeled house on 56 acres, mostly wooded. Ray was so excited and suprised that I actually liked the least expensive one the best that we signed the contract, gave her some cash and were on our way home. Our intention was to make it to Memphis by dark and find someplace to crash. We got past Memphis, then remember that there wasn't much selection on our route thru Mississippi. The next largest town was Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis. After driving up and down the access road three times, I finally asked for directions to any hotel. Apparently it was tucked back from the highway, and lucky for us, it was brand new, nearly vacant, and we got a discount because of it! We had a lovely room (at the Wingate Hotel) and in the morning we hit our favorite, the continental breakfast bar. This one was special though, it had everything; eggs, sausage, more and they even had a waffle iron to make your own waffles - which I did and they were fabulous. After gorging we were on the road again and made it home just after dark.

Overall, an extraordinary trip. I had forgotten how much fun Ray and I used to have when we traveled with the horses, race track to race track, exploring new towns and places. I guess something about being stranded together in unfamiliar surroundings somehow brings us together and really makes us work as a team - this is so cliche - but us against the world, just a little reminder that we still have eachother.