We Have a Deal

I've been searching to purchase something new. Lost out on Horse Thief Ranch in Canyonlands. Looked at a couple properties at the other end of Lockhart Basin, visited a cave house on Montezuma Creek and then was pretty much set on making a bid on a SITLA property outside of Bluff and part of Comb Ridge in Cedar Mesa.

A concern has been how am I going to split myself up to run two places hours apart and without Base Camp suffering some. I've been waiting for the place across the river to get settled as I have first right of refusal on Caveman Ranch or Tangren La as it's been called both. They are finally done suing each other, or at least the time within which to appeal has passed and about ready to put it up for sale. I thought when I agreed to watch it for free for a couple of years that they'd go get an appraisal and list it at that which I think would have come in somewhere around $1.5 million or so. However what I'm hearing is they're going to ask $6 million. There's no power, there's no water source other than trucking it in, no solar, and the rooms aren't anywhere close to being finished. I was thinking if I only had to spend $300,000 to get it going I'd be getting it done cheap. At $6 million, I'm nowhere close. I don't blame them. Like every seller I ever met they think their property is worth more because........well it just is. That would have solved my access to running two places at the same time with a five minute kayak or with a frozen river a two hour drive.

I'm driving back from town one day and I run into my neighbor Doug, on this side of the river. He doesn't come out much and rarely stays at the property so I don't see him all that often. We pull up in trucks side by side and he says he's tired of driving out here checking on his place and as he promised ten years ago if he went to sell it he'd ask me first. So he asks me and I say yes.

Over the last month I've spent a lot of time over there learning how it works and thinking about pricing while working through minor roadblocks and I think we're about set. Until it actually closes escrow anything can happen but I don't currently see any potential issues coming up. Around the first of the year Base Camp Adventure Lodge will double in size adding two, two bed room houses and two pretty fine hogans along with a huge garage, boat house, boat dock, and boat ramp and a bunch of equipment. The price is right and it's five minutes away. Sometimes good things come to those who wait.