Chapter 2 - Definitely Crazy.

The Scouting Trip (alternate title--Cramped and Cranky)

Must hurry, must hurry, must HURRY! DH was afraid to let this opportunity slip through our fingers, although we have 60 of them. Fingers, that is.


Because the price was good and the location was good, we needed to get up there now, or risk losing out. So, we decide that driving up was the only reasonably economical option. It’s a 24 hour drive if you don’t stop to pee or eat. We chose to do both, therefore the trip was extended to about 30 hours.

The “we” that went was me, my DH (dearest husband), my DM (dearest mother) and my DBG (dearest brother’s girlfriend). My DM lives about 2 hours north of us, so we picked her up on our way.

And there we were, piled into the trusty Element at 9pm on a Friday night, all gung ho to get there. Little did we know just how much harder that drive would be starting it after a full day of work. We were just starting out at about the time that we should have been going to bed. It would also become painfully clear that the backseat of the Element is hard as a rock. Being the owner, I don’t spend a lot of time back there, but I did on this trip and it wasn’t pleasant. Let this be my plea to Honda to do something about it.

After a few stops at Cracker Barrel and KFC to soothe the backseat beast, we arrived in Lake George at around 10:30pm on Saturday night, looking for something to eat. A pizzeria was still lit up on the main drag and it was delicious. Don’t remember the name, I was too tired.

We had reservations at some cottages in Schroon Lake to get us through the night, the rooms were fine. It was a place to sleep, which we needed desperately. A good night’s sleep did us a world of good and we woke up on Sunday morning refreshed. Got some breakfast and headed to the property just a few short miles away.

The property was unmistakable. We had pictures, and unfortunately, the pictures didn’t lie. We went into the first cabin, the biggest one, and it wasn’t so bad. There was garbage in there, and it was clear that it had been raided for scrap metal, but not really bad. It went downhill from there. In some cabins, the “stuff” was stacked over our heads. I can’t say it was garbage, it was just lots and lots of stuff. Chairs, tables, Chinese checkers…

And there were tires and propane tanks by the hundreds. I think they multiplied like rabbits. At any rate, we still saw potential in the property and there was some interesting, saleable items among the piles. We didn’t really need to deliberate much, so we picked up the phone and made an offer. And we waited for the realtor to call back, setting a deadline of about 6pm, because we needed to start the long drive back.

At 5:59, the phone rings and the realtor is happy to take a verbal offer over the phone, which we did. We didn’t hear back on the offer for what seemed like months, but in reality it was only days. In the end, they accepted our offer with a little bit of a bump up, and we were on our way!

Scared to death and a little nauseous.

To be continued…