When we first decided to move to the Eagle River area, I thought we'd be able to find a house with a great yard; I thought it would be cheaper than the one we had bought in Seattle four years earlier. I was wrong. In Seattle we owned a 3 bedroom house on a 9000 sq ft lot. Don't get me wrong about Seattle, it is an expensive place to live, but we happened to live in a not-so-desirable part of the city where it was mildly affordable. For the same price here you can get a small house (it won't be very nice), but you can't get a yard that big. What we found is that any place on a nice piece of property was out of our price range. That and there just weren't many houses for sale in our price range. Or at all.
I am very happy that we were able to afford something here though, even if it's not what I first imagined. A two bedroom condo might not be the best place for us to have backyard BBQ's or to live in the long-term, but when I pull onto Riverside Drive on a clear day and I see this view, none of that matters.
We may not be able to have everything, but what we do have is front-door access to one of the largest state parks in the country.
Your last line nailed it. If everybody had a house on a large lot then our cities would sprawl and there would be no public land (sort of like Homer). I'd much rather live on small lots with neighbors all packed in close, and then have some wild places to explore nearby. Patrick
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