Back and forth, back and forth

Over the last few days we've covered 600 km around Halifax/Dartmouth looking at houses, property, the ocean, lakes, and cityscapes. The highways and roadways around the region are awesome, with the time from Hantsport to Dartmouth being 45 minutes door to door. Hantsport is a town of 1250 people on the Minas Basin - an area with numerous lakes and rivers, and where the Bay of Fundy ends and the clay begins.

An equally amazing drive is the one to Western Shore. Another 45 minute drive through evergreens and past lakes to a quiet town on the Atlantic, complete with Oak Island (psst, rumour has it that Captain Cook buried treasure here, though no official map exists). There's plenty more to see if you take the HWY 3 drive, but that will add quite a bit of time to your drive.

What we have also found is that sellers really are, sometimes, all about polishing a turd. We've visited properties that on paper looked really good, and in reality we couldn't get out of the driveway fast enough. A prime example was a little gem on HWY 14 on the road from Gold River to Windsor. It was advertised as a 6 year old house with 2 bedrooms - 2 bathrooms on 57 acres with a wooded area, wood stove, central vacuum system, satellite dish, whirlpool, wood heat, and electric heat. Sounds good, right?

Right. What they fail to mention is that the house is only one of many buildings on the property - none of which are even close to finished. The main building has an outside door on the second level, with no staircase or deck in sight. That the siding, or whatever exterior finish was intended for the house, is still at the store in the box/on the skid. That there are vehicles from all of the decades going back probably 50 years littering the property - none of which will depart under their own steam. That there were going to be live chickens wandering around as a part of the bargain. Needless to say, with the amount of clean up and fix up/finishing work involved we chose to forego the opportunity for cheap eggs.

Tomorrow we are off to Terrance Bay and Shad Bay to see more glorious views of the Atlantic, and more houses. Who knows. Maybe we'll find a diamond that's been polished instead.