El Paso de Robles

"El Paso de Robles" is the official name of what we hope to be our new home town; it is commonly known as Paso Robles or simply "Paso". For you non-Spanish speakers, "El Paso de Robles" literally means "the pass of the oaks." I'm not sure where the "El Paso" part comes from; the pass over the Santa Lucia mountains is some 20 miles south of here. The "Robles" part is obvious: the hillsides are dotted with California live oak trees. At this time of year, with all of the native grasses now a golden yellow color, the verdant green, stately shapes of oak trees serves as a never-ending accent wherever you go. 

The images below are actually from a lot that we looked at, but eventually decided we weren't interested in.

Paso is a city of about 30,000 people, situated in the upper Salinas River valley, roughly halfway between LA and San Francisco. It's 25 miles or so inland, sitting astride US 101, which is as a much more scenic alternate to I-5, which runs some 50 miles or so farther inland. Paso is one of the premier wine-growing areas in California; I wouldn't care to make a careful guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a hundred wineries in the area. 

We're fairly familiar with the area. At one time, both of my sisters and their respective spouses owned vacation homes at Lake Nacimiento, which is in the hills about 25 miles northwest of Paso. We spent a lot of summer weekends passing through Paso on the way to the lake. 

The county we are in, San Luis Obispo County, contains about 250,000 people. Most of the population is contained in a number of small cities and communities strung along 101. The county seat and largest city, San Luis Obispo (SLO), has a population of 50,000 and is about 30 miles south; it is the site of California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo campus, universally known as Cal Poly. Daughter Jill is an alumnus of Cal Poly, so we are very familiar with the SLO area. 

What are WE doing right now? We are moving full speed ahead with buying a one-acre parcel of land and having a manufactured house put on it. We've identified an undeveloped lot that we really like. Being undeveloped, there are a lot of moving pieces that we need to get sorted out before we put in an offer. We need to worry about power, a well, a septic tank, and fire department access. Additionally, the manufactured home people need to ensure that access to the property is adequate for their needs. Our original plan was to sell our condo in SoCal and use the proceeds from that sale to buy all of this. Since we are now planning on doing all this now - instead of 4-6 months from now as originally planned - we need to work out some interim financing, too. 

Once most of that stuff is sorted out, hopefully in the next week or so, we're ready to pull the trigger on buying the land. Once we own the land, most of the other things can start to happen. We'll be writing this up as things happen... stay tuned!