Thursday, September 24, 2015

To Busy To Ride


My Lily White......  has been getting an unwanted vacation over the past few weeks. Well, unwanted on my part anyway.  She may be enjoying it. She is alone here at the farm as Marie is out on a lease for the winter and my boarder moved her horse to another stable due to my impending move. Lily's been wonderful about being alone though. No fuss at all, not bothering the fences. Just chilling out and I think enjoying no competition for anything. Though she is more happy to see me now then she was before. We are in full force packing mode here now. Everything is going forward with the sale of our house just fine. The buyer signed off on the inspection other than we have to shock our well. Which we are in the process of doing right now. The closing was scheduled for Oct. 1st but the buyer is having a survey done and that won't start until the beginning of next week. The surveyor said he would not be able to get it done by Oct. 1st but should have it done by the following week. So, we are shooting for a closing date of Oct. 15th.

We have put in an offer that has been accepted on a home in Southern Illinois. It is in the Shawnee National Forest. We would have liked a bit more acreage but as expected, due to our lack of being independently wealthy, we had to make a few compromises to get as much as we could of what we wanted in a price range we could afford.



I have been searching the real estate ad's for where we want to move quite obsessively and also have an agent there looking as well.  I've been determined to find a place with direct trail access. I am not going to move 1/2 way across the country to a place with over 1200 miles of trails and end up living where I have to trailer out all the time to go riding. Well, finding an affordable trail side property has been a bit of a challenge in the area of Shawnee I want to be in. Trail side property seems to be like lake front property here. More expensive if it has direct rail access. We found a few that we looked at when we were there in June that were in our price range but the houses either needed a lot of work or they didn't have a barn etc. And the price didn't leave us money to do any work on the place or build a barn of garage if needed.
A group of us went down the Shawnee in June to pick up a mule I had purchased and also so Fred and I could check out some property's. There were a couple we liked but really only one with direct trail access. It had a fabulous barn and workshop but the house wasn't much to get excited about. Our friend Anthony took us to look at a place that was for sale by owner the morning we left. We could not get into it as we could not get in contact with the owner  who had died 3 weeks prior, so  wasn't answering his phone...... Anyway, after walking the property, we jumped back into Amy's truck and it would not start. We ended up spending hours and hours hanging around while the guys worked on Amy's truck. We liked the property that we had come to look at. The building was the question. Nice big metal barn but the "home" is an apartment built into the barn. I'm told it's nice and I have no trouble living in a house in the barn. Fred was less excited about it.  BUT, enough about that place as it's not THE place....
In our time hanging around, I noticed the place right next to it was also for sale by owner. I kept thinking what a nice looking place it was and walked up by it and just figured it was out of our price range. We were later told that it had sold so I didn't think about it again. A few weeks ago I was searching homes on line and low and behold but I see this place on the market. I contacted my agent and the sale fell through and it's up for sale again. !!!! I'm excited as it turns out it is within our price range. We know what the property looks like and I know it has very close trail access. It has a new 30x40 metal barn/garage. The house is a manufactured home but looks good. 15 years old. I contacted Anthony and asked if he and Cathy would be willing to go look at it for us. He said yes and got in touch with my agent and went down last Saturday. He and Cathy said the place is very clean and well maintained and thought we would really like it. So, we put in an offer and it has been accepted. We have a tentative closing date of Oct. 30th on this home. 
The house is just 1.1 miles from a nice equestrian campground. There are 3 trail heads right from there and a 4th close by. The campground is open year round and....... has a restaurant! 

Pictures of the outside of the house in Illinois. We will add on to the left side of the garage to put stalls in.






Pictures of the Kitchen/Dining/Living room. The home has an open floor plan. 3 Bedroom and 2 full baths. Not excited about all the carpeting but that can be changed after we're settled in. 















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