Old Age & The Final Home

Cheri and I originally wanted to slowly sail around the world when we retired in 2015.  We spent six years getting our boat and ourselves ready and then life got in the way.  My Mom needed to move in with us and she couldn’t get on board the boat.  It wasn’t even low tide yet so we knew right away that we needed to make other arrangements.  We were told that Florida didn’t have state income tax but they did have mostly nice weather and alligators.  We bought a house sight-unseen near Jacksonville, mostly because that area isn’t attractive to hurricanes.  We moved our boat down there thinking we could still sail to the Bahamas now and then.  Got Mom moved into the house and then we got old.  Arthritis for me and a heart attack for Cheri convinced us to stay stuck in the dirt and sell the boat.  That door to our dream had slammed shut.  We had huge regrets about that but we’re pretty good at rolling with the punches so we just kinda moved on to plan B.  We both still get a funny feeling when we see a beautiful sailboat though.  The dream is gone but not forgotten.

We found our new retirement home in St Augustine.  Beautiful stucco, one story, 3300 sq ft home that backed up to a preserve.  Best of all this was a “short sale” and we got a sweet deal on it.  Just about the time we closed on the house my Mom moved north to be with my sister (she always liked her better) and there we were, just the two of us with a 3300 sq ft, 5 bedroom, 4 bath home.  We decided this was actually a good thing for us because Cheri wanted a studio for quilting and watercolor painting, while I wanted space for a model railroad.  We still had room for a guest room and bath or two.

We decided we could live out our lives here and made some improvements.  We removed the back yard (I hate grass) and put in a nice pool with a summer kitchen and added a Koi pond with a sweet waterfall, all inside a 65’ x 35’ screened-in enclosure.  The next year we had the old, broken up concrete driveway replaced with pavers, then had the roof replaced.  Two years after that we added solar panels.  By the time we got the panels up and running I realized I didn’t like Florida so much.  In the seven years we lived there the Zillow value on our home had more than doubled so we decided to take the cash and run.

And this is where this story really starts.  We got a home equity loan and went looking for a new place to live.  We have some close friends and relatives up on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and during our visits up there had come to really enjoy pretty much everything about the place.  It’s separated from the rest of the state by a 17 mile long bridge and tunnel complex across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.  They keep the tolls high enough to ensure modern society rarely comes over and ruins everything.  The people there are so laid back it sometimes feels like you’re in the 1800’s.  There is a large community of artists of all sorts as well as watermen and farmers, and liberals and conservatives are pretty much evenly split.

The history of the Eastern Shore goes back to the beginning of English settlement in the New World and had close ties to the first settlement of Jamestown shortly after it was first started.  Captain John Smith first explored and mapped the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 while looking for a passage to India.  He selected a 13 year old lad to live with the Indians to learn their language and work as an interpreter.  When that lad grew up the Indian King on the Easter Shore gifted him 3000 acres of land just north of present day Cape Charles.  This was in the early 1600’s, more than a century before the Revolutionary War.

The biggest city in Northampton County, where we will live, is Cape Charles which is maybe ten miles from the bridge/tunnel.  Cape Charles used to be the main connection point to the outside world for the Eastern Shore locals and ran paddle wheel ferry boats over to Norfolk and back several times a day.  In the 1800’s a railroad was built from Philadelphia to Cape Charles providing a fast connection to the ferries that allowed the farmers and fishermen to get their goods to the outside world.  This was the way of life here until the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was built in 1964 which promptly put both the railroad and the ferry system out of business.  Sixty years later most of the locals still resist the change and crossing over the CBBT to the outside world is only done when absolutely necessary.  I’m hoping it always stays that way.

The area we chose to live in is about a 20 minute drive north of Cape Charles.  The Indians from this part of Virginia had a common language called Algonquin and their word Machipongo means “fine dust and flies”.  Machipongo is also the name of the area we will soon be living in.  I’m pretty sure it has a different meaning now.

So, we studied Zillow with the intent of finding a nice home on the water.  The prices were about 1/3 what they were in Florida except for those properties right on the water which are mostly reserved for folks from up north with fat wallets who come here for summer vacations to practice running their boats aground.  After a few months of hunting on-line we realized we weren’t going to find what we wanted and decided to buy a vacant lot and build a home.  We hired a local real estate agent to show us around and made the ten hour drive north to see what was what.  Rick, the agent, had a list of six vacant properties to show us, most of them out of our price range.  The first one was about an acre with some woods along a creek but was mostly unplanted farmland.  Driving over to the next one Rick mentioned that he had a property that wasn’t on the market yet but we might want to take a look at it anyway.  OK, let’s do that.  We pulled into a driveway and when I got out of the car I looked across about 500 acres of cotton to where I could almost make out the plantation home that ruled over that land.  I looked at Rick, who kinda grinned and pointed across the street to an unimproved, wooded lot covered with the tallest, fattest pine trees I’ve seen since I was in the Redwoods out west.  The lot was 2.2 acres in a distorted rectangle shape, fully wooded with old growth Pine overhead and 20’ tall Hollies underneath.  Totally pristine.  There was not much undergrowth so exploring was not a problem and the forest floor was layered with 5” deep pine straw.  You could lay out on the ground and be as comfortable as you’d be on that $2500 mattress back home.  Oh yeah, the lot also had water on two sides and the opposite shore was a preserve so no homes would ever be built there.  At night you could look down the creek and see nothing but stars.  No barking dogs.  Herds of deer crashing through the woods and hordes of raccoons rustling through the trash.  It seemed ideal.

It turned out the lot was owned by a wealthy dude who would come by occasionally but had never done anything with it in over 20 years (?).  He had passed away last year and his estate couldn’t be settled until the property was sold.  The sellers were “highly motivated”.  “That’s interesting Rick.  What are they asking?”.  He said the property was appraised at about 1/3 of what it was actually worth.  He drove us a few miles to see another lot that was similar in size and on the water but not as nice.  It was priced at, you guessed it, three times the other lot.  I was just now beginning to appreciate what a seasoned salesman Rick really is.

That day we looked at one more lot, which was mostly a tidal marsh/mud flat with trees.  We told Rick we really liked that one lot that wasn’t available yet and asked how long before it goes on the market.  Rick said that since he was the property’s agent he had complete control over that and that if we decided to buy it right away we’d be the only buyers involved, no bidding, no hassles.  Man this guy is good!  He actually said we had a few weeks because the lawyer was up in Baltimore and the family was scattered all over the country.  I’m thinking this is such a great deal we had better get a surveyor out there right away.  Rick says he knows a really good surveyor.  Uhm, OK.  We called our builder and got the name of the surveyor he uses.

At this point I have only gotten about halfway through my notes to bring this story up to date but this seems like a good place to pause for now.  We’ve met a lot of interesting folks (as well as some real characters) in the few months we’ve been here.  The beautiful land, the history and the people make for an interesting story that’s still in its first chapter.  I’d like to convey all of that as well as the design and building of our new (and final ?) home.