Moving to Texas was a hard sell. Because of work, I flew back and forth between the stunning Pacific Northwest to the flat-as-a-burnt-pancake plains of Texas. I had been asked to relocate to the fugly state for years in order to be closer to my team, but there was no way in Satan’s booty hole I’d leave the picturesque for the puke.
Case in point:
I first went to Texas in December of 2016. You’d think I’d have photos of it, but so ugly and so brown was it that I couldn’t even summon the energy to pull phone from purse to snap shots of the flatness on my first trip there. Underwhelmed isn’t a strong enough word. I did photo-document my triumphant returns to the PNW.
But time wore on.
When the crazy of 2020 took hold in the whacko residents of the northwest, there I was suddenly snooping Texas real estate on Zillow dot com, eager to flee the gestapo residents of the west coast.
I have always been and forever will be a country girl. Give me views or give me death. I need natural beauty to feed my creative soul, so it was never an option to relocate from my small-town Nordic inlet to a concrete jungle plagued with heat sink and poor city planning. I’m looking at you Dallas with your Dallas North Tollway North. Screw you.
Texas is so flat it has to distinguish areas that are not by calling them “hill country.” I want to be clear: the hills of Texas are ground mounds with modest expectations. They are not the Sierra Foothills, which is where I grew up, that are vast, rolling and steep. The Texas hills have hopes of being real hills if they do their homework and eat their vitamins.
One Saturday in January of 2021 I ventured into “hill country” Texas and for the first time I looked upon the land with something other than disdain. Trees. Slopes. Creeks and rivers. Why gosh golly darn, this was country. While it would never measure up to the majesty of the Pacific Northwest, it would make do. The hill country had peace, quiet, and a girl-next-door beauty I could find myself liking.
I had one house in particular in mind. It had been listed for some time so I figured I might be able to negotiate the price to something I could afford. But Google couldn’t find it.
I’m not exaggerating when I say I spent two to three hours trying to locate the house based on the listing address. Twas not happening. But in the two hours of searching for what would one day be Flying Solo Ranch, I traversed the neighborhood. And loved it.
Ranches, farms, small ranchettes with beautiful custom homes, some new and plenty old, were speckled all over countryside, covered in a blanket of beige winter grass. But I saw how pretty it would be once the spring grass had sprung.
After driving about for hours I called it. Though my sense of direction is decent, no amount of squinting over the horizons would get me to the house. I pulled over when I had a decent signal and tapped Google Maps, hit “satellite view” and pinched for the house based on landmarks featured in its listing. When I believe I’d found it, I dropped a pin and hoped for the best.
Eureka! Not wanting to disturb the residents, I gazed upon it from afar. There was a distinct feeling of “…oh…” and I wanted to mosey on in to peep the land. The listing agent wasn’t available to drop everything and meet me there, so I had to settle with my distant view of the land, eyeballing it like some pervert from afar.
Days later I nabbed a real estate agent of my own. She was freaking amazing. Seriously. Love her. While the house was nothing to write home about, the property was everything I wanted. You can fix a house. You can’t do much to improve location. The location stole my heart.
I took several photos the first day I saw it (a few are above) knowing this place was the one. I didn’t bother looking at other properties, partly because I was enamored with this one, and partly because in early spring of 2021, Texas properties were getting gobbled up fast.
I’ve been here nearly three years. It’s the first house I’ve owned. I’ve made steady progress on both the property and the house. The house can and will be discussed in a separate post.
Here are some more photos from Spring and Summer of 2021, when I moved in.
And now a gallery of shots taken after moving in, living here, with some recent photos from 2023 and 2024.
It’s not always been easy, but my goodness it’s been worth it.
