OK. Some factoids to clear up any misconceptions.
Factoid Number One:
I called it a cabin. This place is an upscale, chi chi Bay Area haven for dog freaks. We paid like $200 a night for this glam 900sf studio that was bigger than our house. Giant, milguard Windows to take in the stunning view. All groovy, built from old storage shed on the old ranch. Plaster finishes (hey, not unlike the ones that are trashed out in my office!). Eggplant towels to go with saffron leather Ikea chairs and walls. Mod patterned duvet. Glass blocks in the giant bathroom. I hate glass blocks in general (they are ok in vintage, West Hollywood usages, I guess) and I would say my taste veers somewhat from the Factoid Number Two Genius Owners. But not so much I didn't want to stay there. But lets you think it is some old, crumbly cabin with flashlights for electricity. We are talking sconces everywhere on dimmers. It is what we pay to get back to nature. What dog people pay so their dogs can run after pigs for a few days.
Factoid Number Two:
A lady and her husband are the geniuses behind what has got to be the Super Cash Cow of the Other Place. They started with one property, called Sheep Dung Estates, in Yorkville, up the road from Booneville. Built some groovy houses on it, fixed up some exisiting, and rented them to rich dog freaks like me. Bought this land. Sold the Yorkville property. Not only are they preserving rapidly shrinking old ranch lands (think Napa up there in the Anderson Valley) but they have got to be making some serious rent checks from the 3 little houses because they are always full. Then they built their own house on a stunning ridge up the hill from the pond with much solar panels and recycled this and that. People get addicted to this place and I don't think they need to advertise at all.
Factoid Number Three:
We drove up to Ukiah on the way home. Boonville sits on the coastal side of some mountains between Cloverdale to the South and Ukiah to the North. A lady that rode with me moved to Ukiah last year and bought a house on land for $500,000. I have had this idea in the back of my head ever since maybe we could move there too. Ukiah looks like what I imagine Cour D'Alene, Idaho to look like. Kind of reminds me of Boulder Creek but with a front and center Wal Mart. A place I imagine Nazi Youth to hang out in front of a laundromat. Besides the regular cast of homeless, also includes a lot of Native Americans too because reservations nearby. It seems the boundary to Much Northern California lies somewhere around Cloverdale. My dreams of somewhere to move lie shattered that I don't want to live somewhere like Ukiah.
Factoid Number Four:
Let's look at Booneville. Anderson Valley was a rocking farming and logging community in the 1800's and the kids started talking a weird kid language and then it spread to adults and then all of a sudden they had their own language called Boontling. It's a dead language now. Horn of zeese means cup of coffee. Wineries moved in at some point, bought up all the land and it's expensive there. But not in a Healdsburg way. There are no pricey antique stores, a lot of old hippies, grape farmers, meth folk and mexican field worker family poverty. People stop there on their way to Mendocino, so places to eat lunch. It kind of reminds me of what Santa Cruz is to Boulder Creek. There are no small animal vets in Booneville. You have to drive the Cloverdale Road or the Ukiah Road. It's remote in a "only 2 hours from SF" kind of way. That lady I met last time we were there who decided to shoe her own horses (no good horse shoers down there but also she was crazy) drives her horses to Napa or Davis for the vet. She grew up there.
Factoid Number Five:
Checkout time is at 11am. It isn't your house or land anymore. Gary doesn't do time well. At 10 past 11, I had me and dogs loaded in car and he was still fiddling with the bike. The maids pulled up to clean the place. Lots of expansive tile floors to clean and a giant bathtub to scrub, even though we left it clean I am sure they make it cleaner. The 2 ladies were both decked out in pink outfits and drove a super broken down looking Honda. They just sat in their car til he got his bike up onto the bike rack on my car. When he got in our car, they got out of theirs. I waved. They didn't. They just watched us drive down our long dirt driveway. Just another day at a crappy job for them.
Factoid Number Six:
The other thing I did on vacation was eat junk food til I almost popped. I think you are supposed to cook healthy Chez Panisse style Bay Area meals on the Crate and Barrell cookware there in the house, cabin, plaster finished storage shed. We ate potato chips and bagels and cheese rolls and Gary went down and got burgers one night from the High Pockety Ox. Now all my pants are popping at the waist. There was a big mirror in the bathroom that you had to look at yourself naked getting out of the shower. Not a thing you would normally want in your non glass blocked bathroom.
I would still go back in a second though.
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