Did we mention that we bought a lighthouse? Funny story... we had guests over for dinner one night, and something came up - living off the grid, perhaps, or chicken farming, or something, and the computer came out, rmls.com was pulled up, a search was done, and a lighthouse popped up.
The lighthouse is called Warrior Rock lighthouse. It's on Sauvie Island, (about 10 miles north of downtown Portland), and it's Oregon's smallest lighthouse. It sits close to the northern point of the island. Sauvie Island divides the Columbia from Multnomah Channel, and the lighthouse is on the Columbia River side, on an apparently especially treacherous point. It's still in use; there have even been a few recent (and not so recent) shipwrecks out there.
Now here's what we've really ended up with: It's 1.65 acres, on the Columbia River, with a US Coast Guard-maintained lighthouse sitting on it. It's a popular hiking destination. The lighthouse is surrounded by 12,000 acres of the Sauvie Island Wildlife Reserve, which means that it's a 3 mile hike in from the trail head on the island, or a half mile boat trip from downtown St Helens. There's a beautiful beach with public access for hikers, kayakers, fisherman, whatever.
The area never became part of the reserve because it had the lighthouse keeper's house on it. And a barn, and a dock, and all that. But it all burned down in the 80's and we're left with a chimney and a couple of posts in the water. It even had power poles out to it from St Helens. But no more; now we've got a chimney, a foundation, and a couple of unknown structures.
it's entirely off the grid from water and power (don't panic, your cell phone works fine), and it's in a flood way, which is similar to a flood plain, except that they assume, for engineering purposes, that the water won't just be high, it will be moving. Very rapidly. So the US Army Corps of Engineers gets to be involved in any building permits. The land is zoned both recreational and historical, Oh, and it's in a riparian zone.
What this all means is that it's essentially unbuildable (don't worry, we knew this when we bought it), and what we have is a really cool camping spot. With our own bay, a shipping channel in front of our noses, our own sea lion (his name is Monty), and a lighthouse.
We have random plans for the site - gene wants to build a picnic table, christi wants to build a dragon. The biggest issue right now is that everything that is not the beach or the lighthouse is covered in blackberries. We've been making progress with clippers, machetes, and beer. You can get a grant from the state to control noxious weeds in riparian areas, and we're considering going after that. We want to know everything about the place - the history (lighthouse and pre-lighthouse), the plants, the soil types, and we've been looking into that (and to that end, we got warriorrock.com, to post our findings).
So it's an adventure.
View Larger Map
And sorry to those who have been looking for us as of late. We've both been a bit out of touch - both of us have just crawled out from under huge work projects, and we're looking forward to rejoining the human race.