Chisoku House Search - House #2 - Sperry, IA

Before we left Comlara Park (see last post), we had a “night out” in Bloomington, IL, where we went to The Lucca Grill for pizza. This family-owned restaurant is known for bringing pizza to central Illinois when it opened in 1936. We were warned that you can’t get in there very easily, so we made early reservations for 5 pm and showed up early to boot. We split a medium A La Baldini pizza and each had one beer (neither of these are on our diets!). After that, we walked .5 miles to Carl's Ice Cream and had an ice cream cone (also not on our diets). All very much worth it, and hey, we got some walking in! Bloomington is a cool town… Sort of like a smalltown-city. A lot of the main downtown walking area was under construction, unfortunately. But we can see how charming it normally is when everything is open and accessible.

From Bloomington, we drove west and made stops in Peoria, Hanna City, and Farmington. These stops are all related to other houses in our house search that we haven’t told you about. These are houses we have seen that we either didn’t like or didn’t decide on fast enough before they went under contract. (We keep an eye on the under-contract houses just in case!) For each house I mention below, you can click the link to see the listing for the house.

In Peoria, we met with Sandy, a real estate agent who previously showed us “the Elmwood house,” which is actually on the edge of Farmington, IL – where Craig’s grandparents lived and which has many memories for both of us from multiple visits over the years. We met with Sandy so that she could formally become our agent for that part of Illinois, should we see anything else we want to explore there. When she showed us the Elmwood house during a trip to Kansas that we did back in April, she was actually the listing agent, and we would have had to go into a “dual agency” situation with her if we had asked her to represent us. However, as it happened, that house went under contract soon after we saw it. So, it is currently out of the running. That house had a perfect location for us, but the layout was weird, and we would have had to build an addition and reconfigure the front of the house to get what we wanted. It also only has one bathroom. But the property and landscaping are really nice, with amazing views of the countryside.

So far, we don’t have any other houses in that area to see, but we still drove by “the Hanna City house,” on our way west, just to get a glimpse of it. Sandy was going to set up a showing of it for us, but it went under contract too quickly. It is also in a good location, but a little closer to neighbors than other properties we have been looking at. Still, these neighbors all seem to have nice properties, and there is a good amount of space between houses. One negative thing about this house is that the bedrooms are a bit smaller than what we have been looking at. But it doesn’t matter anyway because it is under contract! 😄

After Hanna City, we drove to Farmington because it was on our way, and we always like to stop there. We also knew it had a laundromat we could use to wash our mounting pile-o-laundry. (Fun fact: Craig's grandfather used to own a bunch of laundromats in the surrounding towns.) We are so glad we stopped there because the town seems to be doing pretty well. On previous stops, there were more empty storefronts on the main drag, but now, things seem to be picking up. We chatted with the lady at the laundromat, who has added a bar to one end of the building. I guess that is one way to make more money from the customers! (Craig's grandfather, a Mormon, probably never would have done that!) She was fun to talk to because she is from Farmington and remembers how things used to be. So, she and Craig reminisced about things he remembers from childhood visits.

Unfortunately, one thing she mentioned was that the Catholic church a few doors down from Craig’s grandparents’ house is being torn down. So, that was sad to see. It was such a fixture there. We walked by Craig's grandparents' house and into the main part of town. We are sad to see that the current owners are not taking care of the place... <sigh> We are always tempted to knock on the door and ask if they want to sell it, but we never do.

We walked to the main part of the town and noticed a new bar that used to be the soda fountain shop. We stopped in to see it. The guy who was working there let us come in and look around. It was neat. They have preserved the original floor and kept some of the soda fountain features. They had some cool old pictures of how it used to be on the walls. Next door is a new ice cream shop, and down from that is a nice Mexican restaurant that we ate at the last time we stopped through town. So, compared to our last visit, Farmington is a real happening place now!

From Farmington, we drove further west toward Galesburg and did a drive-by of “the Wataga house.” This property is unique because it has the house and some outbuildings on one side of the road, plus some property directly across the street, which includes multiple grain silos and such. In addition to the fact that the house just didn’t seem particularly appealing, Craig felt like he wouldn't know what to do with so many farming structures that he couldn’t convert into something else. It would be a lot to either maintain or tear down. So, this house is off the list.

After we left the Galesburg area, we headed across the Mississippi into Iowa. Right after you cross the river, you enter Burlington, IA, which is a cool town that I’ll write more about in our next post. Suffice it to say that Burlington provides the anchor for any other properties we might be looking at in this part of Iowa. The other anchor-city (which we haven’t traveled to yet) would be Iowa City, an hour further northwest. (By the way, I've mixed up Bloomington and Burlington more than once lately. So, I'll try not to do that when I write about Burlington in the next post!)

Our first night in Iowa, we stayed at another Harvest Host location: Myers Tree Farm and Wedding Venue. They allowed us to park right next to some tall pine trees, which was nice because it was hotter there, and we liked having some shade. Since we were boondocking, we didn’t have “shore power” to run our air conditioner. However, this Harvest Host location does have an electrical hookup that you can use for a $25 fee if you park by their wedding venue barn. We elected to park in the non-electrical spot. It was very peaceful there, and the dogs could run around freely, which they really liked. Here are some pictures…

The next morning, we were set to see “the Sperry house.” We had already contacted a real estate agent for this part of Iowa (Danielle), and she set up a showing. I was so excited to see this house that I couldn’t sleep the night before. It rained overnight and a little bit into the morning, but Craig said that was a good thing because we would be able to see if any water got into the basement.

As it happened, the basement looked dry and only had minor evidence of water from sometime in the past. We really liked this house based on its location, yard, layout, and size of bedrooms. The drawbacks are that we would need to update the bathrooms and the kitchen and that (more importantly) the pole barn does not appear to be tall enough for Chisoku. So, Craig has been running all kinds of ideas through his head and searching the Internet for ways to alter a pole barn to be taller. This is one thing that holds us back on pulling the trigger right now.

Note that I have limited Internet bandwidth as I write this. So, I will likely update this post later with more photos and links to videos. Therefore, if you received this post via email, you might want to check back at the link online to see if I’ve added anything later. It’s just the reality of posting from the road. Here are some pictures in the meantime…

I filmed this video of the backyard. My commentary is lame, but you can get an idea for the property. I hope to post other videos later.

In my mind, the Sperry house is still on the list, but we are still mulling it over. We have at least one other house in mind, and we may look at that in the coming days. In the meantime, we will continue to check out this area. I'll write more about the local area in the next post.