24-27 Aug 2016: Dandridge and Vicinity
We'd passed through Dandridge in the previous Fit, and (especially what with the lake and all) it seemed worth a closer look, including actual official Looks at some properties.
The people who live here do seem to like it, but prices for the sort of property I have in mind are a tad rich for my budget. Still, we got in touch with a Real-a-tor©, and set out to look at three places.
First up: a tad small, but OK-ish in general terms. Needs a bunch of updating, and some minor repairs, etc. It's an estate sale, and there's a lot of Stuff there, including, e.g., some old partially-dismantled car in the basement.
Next: a bigger house, with a decrepit old barn and a big brick 2-bay RV garage with an apartment upstairs. Turns out to be a foreclosure. Whoever changed the locks apparently didn't coordinate with the selling agent, or maybe just botched the job: the key in the lock box doesn't work on the deadbolt on the front door, which in any event is not properly installed and wibbles around loosely (but not loosely enough to "persuade" with any implements we have handy, and I left my lock-fiddling tools at home). We do, however, find our way into the detached garage, which is full of cobwebs and in dire need of cleaning, but it has two garage bays, a room of some sort, and a half-bath downstairs, and two bedrooms, a full bath, and a kitchen upstairs. Yeah, could be a fine upstairs office & lab / downstairs machine shop. But we can't get much idea of the state of the actual house.
Last: that one we'd driven by earlier. Land looks plausible. Workshop-with-apartment looks plausible, though we can only get into the apartment, and that only because the tenant is home. The key in the lock box doesn't work on the house doors, and the house tenant is out. On closer examination, part of the back wall of the house has a discontinuity; apparently that wing used to be the garage, and has been converted to a laundry / mud room by bricking up where the garage door used to be.
So... in terms of properties that fit my current search parameters, Dandridge isn't looking quite so promising.
Also in these days: look around a very little bit of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (no entrance fee, so stopping by for a little hike is no big deal); check out a couple of farmers' markets (the one in Newport doesn't appear to be alive, having a banner displayed but no booths, cars, nor other signs of activity [Added: it's open on Wednesdays, and we weren't there on Wednesday]; the one in Dandridge is alive but occupies an awfully small parking lot); and have a look around the Sweetwater flea market (that one's worth remembering; there's some decent merchandise on display, and the prices are mostly reasonable).
Somewhere along the line, I notice that black people 'round these parts don't seem to be very well integrated; I see them (well, some of them) acting like Aliens Among Us, trying to look harmless and inoffensive. This is vaguely worrisome.
Sometimes we use Joy's iPhone for navigation. The nav chap pronounces some place names oddly; while I know the K in Knoxville is supposed to be silent, I didn't think the N was too. "Oxville"?
Rumor: It is reported that trendy exercise classes in the upmarket suburbs of Knoxville may be followed by social cannabis sessions in the parking lot, and that none of the locals consider this the least bit unusual. I have no first-hand information on this matter.
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