What a fun place West Jefferson has become!
We spent a lovely evening this past Friday at the West Jefferson Gallery Crawl, enjoying artists and art collectors, wine and food, free music and great friends...new and old.
Then we went back to the mountain house for the weekend to paint and get things ready to put it on the market. Hmph! Sitting on the front porch swing when the fog rolls in makes us really think twice about selling out!
We bought the place when Sarah was in diapers, she's a rising Sophomore in college. It was Baxter's first experience helping us build a house, he's finished his BS and Masters and is currently working toward his PhD...married with a house of his own that he happily gets to remodel.
The kids grew up on the mountain, spending every spare weekend there and many summers. They built waterfalls in the stream, damned it to form pools, put in a nature trail to hike cleanly down the side of the mountain, canoed, kayaked, hiked, biked and galavanted all over the county.
The new property is in the same county. Just not West Jefferson. Which seems to be the new artsy "hot spot" in the hills. Boone has been taken over by the college kids. Todd (where the new homesite is) is being taken over by the college overflow...and losing a good bit of it's river water to Boone since they've decided to pipe it from the edge of Ashe County back up to Boone to supply their never ending building boon (isn't is smart to keep giving out building permits when you have no water left?).
Anyway, I'm rambling. The new property will be a great place to build a "downsized" empty-nester kind of home. Not so much land, not as much house, smarter use of space and wiser understanding of lifestyle. And, it is within driving distance of West Jefferson, it just doesn't have all of the sentimental baggage we'll miss from the other "hill". And if we build this one right, maybe we can sell the farm down the road and condense everything into one house! Maybe.
Tough job letting go.
