After thinking about and deciding against purchasing a piece of land in Erie PA, and listening to friends talk about their camp I began to wonder what the cost of land would be. I knew I wanted something near water and looked on the Internet to see what I could find. I came across an advertisement for five or six acres with lakefront footage, and thought hey that is not a bad price. I then showed it to Charles and he said that is interesting and that he would not mind following up on that. So we sent off an e-mail to to company to see what it was all about. The property was up in the Tug Hill Plateau and was mostly a wetland with a shared access to the waterfront. Someone had made a shared bridge to get to the 74 feet of lake front. Since we are not big duck hunters we decided that was not quite what we wanted.
We told the sales person that we wanted a camp where we could take our three girls camping that either had or bordered water. We have enjoyed going to Herkimer Diamond Mine KOA the last couple of years and various state parks around the area. That said, we don't exactly enjoy the occasional drunk bastard in he 90 foot RV parked next to or across from our tent spouting off his crude jokes at 2 am. Don't get us wrong we absolutely love Herkimer KOA and the activities they do with the kids and many fun times we have had there. We just wanted to have access to a more private permanent camp where we could actually feel like we were really roughing it! The investment aspect was appealing too.
The sales man told Charles over the phone that he had some other properties that he could show us so we packed up the girls in the van and drove 30 minutes north from our home to see what the man had to offer. He let us know that he had a subdivision of properties that are not even on the market yet. The properties boarder Trout Brook State Forest and Trout Brook. There were eight properties along the waters of Trout Brook.
We followed the salesman out to the property and parked along the dirt road. The town paved road ended right before the property's driveway. We all hopped out and introduced everyone. We then set off down the tree lined gravel road talking to the salesman and watching the girls run off down the gravel road in excitement. The salesman gave us a map with all the properties each one further in down the driveway and each and all around 200 feet wide. As we walked down the driveway it got closer and closer to the brook. The brook also got lower as the land sloped down. some of the first properties a cabin or camp could be build between the driveway and the brook but as you went further that was less of an option.
Each property was responsible for maintaining the driveway that cut through their property except for the last property at the end of the development. This property was the smallest at about 3.8 acres but had a nice flat area that overlooked the brook where a camp or a cabin could be placed. By the time we got down to this part of the subdivision the mosquitoes were fairly hungry and the girls retreated to the safety of the car. but that did not deter us as this had been a bad year for mosquitoes and this part of the forest was fairly dense.
The brook is not something we can get our river tubes out on but I could imagine our girls scouting up and down the brook making memories and that thought made me very happy. He showed us a bigger more expensive parcel that had part of a large pond on it and across from a reservoir that we could float in tubes on that was about 10 minutes away but we figured we could just drive with our tubes there if we wanted to do that. Eventually the Trout Brook won our hearts and we decided to make an offer.
Here are some early photos prior to purchase:
Please excuse the dash reflection as we drive down the driveway
Charles standing on the property we are purchasing
Trout Brook
