And we're back...

Mitzi enjoyed the Auto Train, and it's likely we'll do it again on at least the southbound leg. It is expensive, but on the southbound trip we can't stay at her daughter's place in DC, we have to get farther south to avoid the hell that is I-95 in the afternoon in South Carolina. So factor in the expense of a night in a hotel, along with the gas, and a little of the sting goes away.

And no matter how you break it up, two days on I-95 is just not fun. We can do the northbound run to DC because we'll leave at oh-dark-thirty and switch drivers every couple of hours. The last hour is brutal, because it's DC, but we've proven we can make it in twelve hours. We have a comfortable place to stay, visit and rest for a couple of days. And it's a relatively short, and mostly beautiful six hours to the Finger Lakes from DC.

We will be going back. While we were up there, we found a little place, and we currently have it under contract. It's not exactly a tiny home, but at 950 square feet, one bedroom and one bath, it's not exactly palatial. We're already thinking about how we might build a little guest cottage, affordably.

We skipped the Finger Lakes last year because Mitzi went to Greece with her daughter. It was a bucket-list trip for her, but she's not enamored with international air travel anymore, neither the expense nor the experience. We will likely do some more travel in North America, but flying overseas is probably not in our future.

So our summers will likely be all spent in the Finger Lakes, where we can travel from there by car to visit friends and family. And host them, once we get those logistics figured out. Fall trips are likely in the future as well, to see the foliage. Six to eight weeks each summer, maybe longer. Her daughter and son-in-law can get up there from DC for a weekend anytime they choose. We've met one of the neighbors and he seems like a nice guy. Raises Angus beef as a hobby, though his wife wants him to quit so they can travel! He's the seller's dad, and so we're pretty confident we'll have someone to keep an eye on the place while we're not there.

Upstate New York is simply beautiful. It's not exactly a climate haven, winters will be milder, but the extremes will still be, well, extreme. And tornados are now a thing there.

Like any major purchase, we wrestled with the, "Are we crazy?" question. I think it's a pretty safe investment. We've no plans to turn it into a vacation rental property, but I suppose that could be an option someday. The real estate market there is hot right now, at least according to the home inspector and the real estate lawyer we're working with.

For me, it does offer a certain peace of mind that we have someplace to run to if something catastrophic happens here. It's a rural location with well and septic tank, but it does have a fiber internet connection. We can build on the land if we want to at some point. We'll be looking at improving its resilience capability. It's not a compound, by any means. But it's a getaway, a hideout maybe.

We have a busy couple of months coming up, travel-wise. I've committed to attending my 45th class reunion at the Naval Academy in September, and Mitzi's nephew is getting married in October.

But maybe we'll get up there one more time this year.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:02 Wednesday, 24 July 2024