Hill Country Hideout: Total Recall

I thought we would interrupt the regularly planned update with a flashback. Shouldn't be nearly as dramatic for you as it was for the Austrian Oak in the movie, but feel free to tune out.

This week we were talking about the project and how it has been both challenging and rewarding this far, and we are really looking forward to enjoying it as a family. Our conversation moved on to the past and the little things we have done with the kids, and before them, to enjoy the property. This spurred us to snooping around for any older pictures we had from those days. We did find a few and I'll share them here. Note that some of these are actual real photos we had to scan so the quality is lacking.

Back in 2001 Roberta and I decided we wanted to buy a piece of property outside of town as an investment. We wanted something on the water, or close to it, and no more than 90 minutes from Austin. We didn't have kids at the time which meant we had tons of free time to work on our search. For months we spent the weekends driving around the Hill Country looking at properties. At first we were looking for property with a small cabin or house so we could actually use it. But after visiting dozens of them we were disappointed. I would spend every weekend for the next 20 years keeping these buildings together rather than enjoying them. We did have a lot of fun though - we hired some real-estate agents from different areas to shuttle us around. Let me tell ya, we rode around with some flat out crazy Texans.

We faced reality and converted our search from homes to land. And there is plenty of it around here. We soon found a few areas just west of Austin and started making offers. At that time, the market was hot. We made offers on 2 properties and were out bid by Californians! But the third time was a charm - we learned from our previous offers and got a great deal on land with 150' of frontage on the west side of the Pedernales River. It was Summer 2002 and Roberta was pregnant with our first child, Addison. Here are some photos from the day we closed the deal. We were taking selfies before it was cool.

Cool black socks, right?

We would head out there on the weekends, make a fire and hang out for a while. There is only so much you can do without running water... eventually, you just "gotta go". But we kept a kayak out there and a fire pit and would hang out when it wasn't scorching hot. Here are a few pictures of Roberta's brother and his wife hanging out with us 10 years ago...

Once the kids came along we would head out for the afternoons to explore, roast some smores and stomp around. All in all, it flew by! and it's hard to believe we're making this happen. Here are a few more pictures from our history in Spicewood.