Carolina in My Mind

The View from our Tent at Chau Ram Park.

Ames and I returned late last night from our week long vacation/househunting trip to South Carolina. We took a detour on the way up for a full-day of Class IV white water rafting on the Chatooga River, and camped out 4 of the 5 nights that we were up there to save money. Two of our nights camping were spent at Chau Ram County Park, where our site (#3) overlooked waterfalls on the Chauga river and had one of the most spectacular views in the park. The other two nights of camping were at Sesquicentennial State Park in Columbia…which featured shotty bathrooms and the sounds of the highway at night. We had planned to stop for a day in Charleston on the way home, but by last night, we were ready to get back to Gainesville.

We had a lot of fun, hit up a lot of our favorite places to eat, and probably saw about 75% of the houses for sale in Columbia. We bought a book entitled 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask to read on the ride up and thought we were going to be able to do it all ourselves. After ending up in a few bad neighborhoods, finding houses that were already sold, and realizing that buying a home remotely was going to be really tough, we ended up deciding to get a buyer’s agent. Although we haven’t bought a house yet, our agent has a pretty good idea of what we’re looking for now, and will check out anything new that pops up on realtor.com and fits our needs.

It’s crazy to me that Amy will be starting her PhD in August and that we will be moving as early as mid-July. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been here in Gainesville for two years, but our anniversary is coming up on July 16th, and we’ve been planning this for a while. It feels good to be headed somewhere new but there’s so much to do before we get there.

2 comments on “Carolina in My Mind

Brian says:

Wow, now you know what I’m going through.

The Orlando market is insane, I got out bid by two people willing to offer cash and they were in a bidding war. It’s actually getting a bit discouraging, hopefully the market in SC is a bit more tame. I can’t imagine looking for a house from a distance, that must be pretty stressful.

Eek! Cash? We want to finance as much as possible so we’ll have money for the important stuff. Oh, that’s another thing…if you’re looking for a contemporary style house in Columbia, forget it! I would say about 95% of the houses are the same style – traditional and brick. Unlike in Florida, where most houses are wood construction or CVS block on a slab foundation; everything in Columbia is up off the ground (with crawl space or a basement below), built with brick, and if it has any wood on the exterior, it’s covered with vinyl siding.

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