My 12 year old son and I took our 1972 Coleman pop-up camper with us to the closing. As soon as the paper work was finished, we headed to the property to drop the camper off and generally mess around on our new piece of land.
Above is the plat, with our place marked with the hand-drawn asterisk. There is no house there anymore. It survived two floods, with the second flood being somewhere around 1995, but within the same year as the second one there was a third flood. The people we bought the property from explained that there was just too much to repair after two floods in one year so they tore it down.
Much of the property is in the 100 year floodplain. The West Virginia Flood Mapping Tool shows just how much...
The light red shading denotes the area of the 100 year floodplain. Our property has the yellow crosshair marker on it.
I have come to terms with having property in the floodplain. In my estimation, it is no different from having a beach house, knowing that in any given year, a hurricane may come along and ruin things. If you want to have fun and enjoy life to its fullest, you've got to be willing to play give and take with Mother Nature.
So We Finally Get There...
It is quite unnerving to have spent 45 minutes on a piece of land and then buy it a couple of months later, having never seen it since the initial impression. Will it be a perfect as we remembered? When my son and I arrived, it was just as we remembered...except...a huge tree on the riverbank had fallen into the river. As we pulled into the property, all I could see was the underside of leaves, which is typically a bad sign. While the fallen tree disrupted a nice view and made the fishing and swimming a tad more challenging, it was only the first of many of our river surprises.
The video starts with the fallen tree and ends with my poor son mowing the grass. Its okay, I paid him well to mow it. Also in the video is the resting place of the '72 Coleman pop-up camper.
The last video shows him swimming in and crossing the river for the first time. He is brave and awesome. The kid waded out into the river, through the grass and weeds, in his boxer shorts no less, because he wanted to be the first to swim in it (and was hot from mowing the grass). He was wearing my polarized shades and could therefore see a variety of detritus and vegetative matter beneath the surface. Seeing everything in the water caused him to consider returning to the shore, many times. With a little coaxing, he waded and swam across the river. I was very proud of his bravery.
Finally, I want to add a Google maps picture of the property to show how remote it is. We absolutely love that about it. I have drawn the property boundaries in red. If you look closely, you can see that Google has actually captured the tree that has fallen into the river.
There are many more photos and videos to come...
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