Email ElizabethA Short Visit to Dunsmuir, California
On our way home to Sacramento from Mt. Shasta yesterday, we stopped by the ambrosial town of Dunsmuir, California. The front desk clerk at the Mt. Shasta Resort told us she lives there and was a bit hesitant in trying to recommend the town to us when we asked about it. I think she didn’t want to appear as though she was boasting in case we didn’t like the town and would somehow hold her responsible for her personal recommendation.
She was really nice to us. One thing I noticed about the people we encountered in Siskiyou County is they are incredibly polite and nice, well, except for the housekeeping police at Mt. Shasta Resort. Here is an example of the niceness in people: the clerk at the Sacred Mountain Spa had a difficult time figuring out a 20% tip for us. I tried to offer a bit of assistance by suggesting that it’s easy to just double 10%, you know, move the decimal point and then double it. She countered by sharing with us that she always leaves $10 and thereby most likely overtips but she doesn’t mind being generous; she doesn’t have to think about tipping or math, and it seems simpler to her. I can see where that approach would work in Dunsmuir, not so much at Ella in Sacramento.
If you like trains, you’ll like Dunsmuir and maybe the Dunsmuir Railroad Depot, the woman at Mt. Shasta Resort finally threw out there. There is a historical area on Sacramento Avenue that runs along the train tracks, but if you read a real estate ad for a home for sale on Sacramento Avenue, it will describe that location as being across from the river, which it also is, but it neglects to mention that between your new home and the gorgeous river lies the rail yard. Of course, I had to stop by a few closed real estate offices to peruse the homes for sale in the windows to see if my estimate of value for those homes was on the mark. I had guessed $150K and sure enough, a few along Sacramento Avenue were for sale at $159,000. See, you can take the real estate agent out of Sacramento, but you can’t take the real estate out of the agent.
Much of the downtown area appears built on a hill. The homes on one side of Dunsmuir Avenue are elevated from the street and the homes on the other side are situated lower than the street, so low that you have to take stairs to get to them, which I imagine means they might fight water retention during a hard rainstorm.
Much smoke in the area from lightning fires prevented us from completely enjoying the tremendous mountain views as the haze was a bit intense. But the weather was warm and the streets quiet. My husband had to stop to take a photo of the assumed food battles between the Pizza Factory and the Burger Barn. We both loved the throwback to our childhoods: the obscure Pacific Bell telephone booth situated on the main drag, Dunsmuir Avenue.
The phone had a dial tone, too, in case you’re wondering. It was a free phone sponsored by some of the businesses in town. Directions on the wall provided the extensions that would be important to people in town to reach such as Social Security, coupled with an extension to obtain a credit card. Any person wandering down the street who had a sudden urge to get a VISA card could pick up the phone to apply. I noticed, though, it was missing an extension for pizza delivery from the Pizza Factory.
Signs about town warned of the dangers of squeezing fish. Like me, you might ask, why would anybody squeeze a fish? Toilet paper, yes, fish, no. But that’s not such a dumb question if you’re participating in the catch and release program, and I’m not talking about jail time. Other signs pointed to fines of $25 to $200 for not picking up dog poop. There will be no dogs running loose in Dunsmuir, and you can’t bring your dog into every restaurant either. Civilized people live in Dunsmuir, I’ll have you know.
We can recommend the Dunsmuir Brewery Works for lunch, in case you’re ever driving by this part of the world and yearning for craft beer, juicy brats with the yummiest mustard seed varieties in a side of potato salad or maybe a mixed garden salad with heirloom tomatoes from next door, topped by adobo chicken. The flies are a bit crazy out on the patio, but large umbrellas keep the beating sun off your head and really, what else could you want?
A McCloud River Falls Trail Hike Instead of an Open House
This is a bad day to hold an open house in Sacramento but it’s a perfect day to hike the McCloud River Falls Trail around Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Actually, there are at least 3 times during the year that are not recommended for holding an open house: 4th of July, Labor Day and Christmas. I am not sure why Memorial Day Weekend is not included in that bunch. In any case, it feels a little bit weird not to be focusing on open houses today.
The McCloud River Falls Trail is a popular and easy hike, a little over 3 miles round trip. You’ll encounter 3 distinct waterfalls. We entered the area at Shasta Trinity yesterday and spotted the long row of cars parked on both sides of the dusty road, where I managed to gouge my ankle by carelessly brushing against a broken manzanita branch. I could not believe I had injured myself and we weren’t even on the trail yet.
The lower falls at the McCloud River Falls Trail is located very close to the parking lot, and there were lots of families lounging about on the rocks, which didn’t look all that comfortable to me, and other brave souls were swimming. A sign nearby said this is where native peoples noted centuries ago that the salmon turned back.
Salmon swimming upstream to spawn is one of those things that I never really believed until I saw it with my own eyes. It sounds so unreal, not only that fish can swim against the current but that they can climb waterfalls, but they most certainly can. We saw them at the fish ladders in Ketchikan last year. The sad part is some don’t make it. It’s a remarkable sight and something everybody should experience at least once in their lives.
Kids jumping Middle Falls, McCloud River
When we reached the McCloud River Falls Trail Middle Falls, about a half mile up the trail from the Lower Falls, it was a spectacular surprise. Rows upon rows of water fall from 100-feet heights over moss covered rocks, so of course a few crazy teenagers elected to jump from that height into the pool below. People from all over the world come to this spot, and we encountered many from a wide variety of countries on the trail. Everybody seemed so respectful of others, kept their dogs leashed and pulled to the side; those coming down let you pass coming up, not at all like the crowds we’ve run across at Yosemite.
At the McCloud River Falls Trail Upper Falls, we watched from a distance as a couple lowered a long rope down the face of the falls. Wondering what they were doing, we approached, but we were so quiet I was worried we’d freak out the guy and startle him. Didn’t want anybody falling off the cliff on our account. But by the time we reached them, the woman had already descended and we spotted her swimming toward shore. Her husband said they routinely travel down the face of waterfalls; this adventure was her birthday present to herself.
I applaud that kind of effort, especially since it differs from my own. Faced with crawling down a waterfall or lying on the beach in Maui, I know which one I picked. The sign nearby says there are salmon in the waters at this point at Upper Falls. So you just know they had to jump up not only the Lower Falls but also the Middle Falls.
Why Mt. Shasta is a Great Sacramento Getaway
If you’ve never been to Mt. Shasta, you are missing a million delightful sights: Dreaded dude playing a recorder and following friends meandering down the middle of the street, characters stuck in a time-warp from 1969 all over the place, woo-woo shops filled with spiritual statues representing many gods and goddesses of Hinduism, an Eileen Fisher outlet, guys carrying their dogs because the sidewalk is too hot, and let’s not forget the guy who undoubtedly had to head back home to change because he forgot to attach deer antlers to his head before going out, but none of those eye-candies detract from the giant mountain ranges all around.
You’ve got your Mt. Shasta, of course, at 14,179 feet, while the town of Mt. Shasta is around 3,600 feet in elevation, if that gives you some idea of the scope. There is also Black Butte, the Crags and the Eddys — which I’ve also seen spelled by real estate agents as The Eddies, which seems kinda Beaverish to me.
This is Siskiyou County, which makes me want to repeat the word over and over out loud, maybe sing a song about it. The county seat is not Mt. Shasta, it is Yreka, not to be confused with Eureka, which is up on the coast and pronounced with a U and not a WHY like Yreka. There is also a huge lake called Siskiyou Lake. You’d think Siskiyou was an Indian name but it could also be from French origins, I suppose.
It’s absolutely beautiful here. I like everything about this place so far, and the couples massage at the spa yesterday was ultra relaxing. We didn’t get as much hiking in as we initially had planned but we’ll do that today. That’s the nice about being on a vacation from Labor and selling real estate in Sacramento, you can do whatever you want to do even if it involves changing your mind. I’d think about a second home here, real estate is incredibly affordable in Mt. Shasta, but it’s also a four-hour drive from Sacramento.
We came here simply because we’ve never been here. I have a client who moved to Mt. Shasta after I sold her home in Folsom a few years ago. That and the illustration of Mt. Shasta on the Shasta pop cans was the extent of my knowledge about the area. Of course, now that we’ve spent a few days here, I can’t imagine why everybody in Sacramento doesn’t visit Mt. Shasta and why I haven’t heard much about it, but maybe I don’t run in the right circles of people. I sell real estate in Sacramento and the only people I know are my clients and other real estate agents.
Our trio of cats are taken care of by our pet sitters staying at our home who send us text messages every now and then, just in case you’re wondering. We didn’t leave them alone to fend for themselves.
The Two Givens in Sacramento Real Estate
There are two givens in real estate that pertain to Sacramento real estate and selling homes in Sacramento and well, just about anywhere in the country, actually. One is if your listing is about to expire, that home will suddenly, for no explicable foreseeable reason, sell. The other is if you go on vacation, all of your listings will sell. And that’s pretty much the way things have been going lately.
We decided to get out of town to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary when all holy hell broke loose. My husband had to peel my fingers off the keyboard and shut down my computer to whisk me away from my desk. But aha, I still had my cellphone. Even if the bars grew weaker as our altitude increased, they have WiFi in Mt. Shasta, you know.
Counter offers that had been submitted days ago, which were presumed lost in the universe somewhere, magically resurfaced, signed and dated and all sparkly looking. Purchase offers jumped out of DocuSign and landed squarely in my lap, acknowledged. The sale of a home in Rancho Cordova quietly closed without fanfare, and another home in Carmichael is preparing to close ahead of schedule today.
I am on the deck of our lodge gazing at pine trees standing tall, motionless and still sleeping, receiving the morning rays creeping slowly across the lake. A blue jay shrieks and its echo reverberates over the water. Other than that, it’s eerily quiet. I don’t even hear the mosquito buzzing about in search of breakfast who is about to come in for a landing on my tasty arm.
In another 30 minutes, my phone will begin to jump around the table, and my email is already dinging. We might be approaching a long holiday Labor Day weekend in Sacramento, but for this real estate agent, it’s always business as usual. I think we’ll take time out for a hike today. I can catch up on work later.
The Worst Ways to Buy a Sacramento Home
Have you ever wondered what are the worst ways to buy a Sacramento home? I swear, there are times when I see flashes of 25 years ago watching buyers in Sacramento hunt for a home to buy. It makes me wonder why they waste the effort. I suppose part of it is due to the low inventory of homes for sale in Sacramento, and those slim pickings can make some buyers feel desperate. The other reason is probably due to the fact that some buyers think they know better than those of us in the industry, which means they probably don’t hold much respect for real estate agents, but some people are like that.
Every so often I will get a phone call from a buyer who starts out by explaining they are not interested in talking to me unless I am the listing agent. That’s code for they hope that by “offering me the opportunity” to work in dual agency (double-end the commission) that I’ll get them a better deal by sacrificing my integrity and ethics. Probably because that’s what they would do, but they don’t realize that I am not them.
Money is not my motivator.
They think that agents will do whatever is necessary to put a deal together because we’re all starving to death or maybe we’re just scumbags, I’m not sure. I refer these callers to my team members to show. But I don’t tell my sellers what I suspect these guys are up to unless I receive an offer, no sense in upsetting them. It does put me on notice, though. And that’s not a very good way to look for a home to buy in Sacramento.
Although maybe the #1 worst way to look for a home to buy is to drive around town calling on For Sale signs. I get a lot of those, and then buyers are ticked off when they find out the home is pending and demand to know why there are no pending signs on the For Sale sign. They don’t realize that all listings are available online these days. Hello, 2014. If they don’t look at an online feed from MLS, they’ll never know whether a listing is pending or not. About half the time the home is pending before the poor sign post company can even pound a post into the ground.
If you’re a buyer in Sacramento trying to buy a home, your best bet is to ask a buyer’s agent to work with you. You’ll get the best representation, the most attention and direct service, and you won’t be driving around calling listing agents to find out the home is already sold. ‘Course, in retrospect, the agents would have to answer their phone.
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