Looking for that perfect land

We've been looking for a place to call (permanent) home for almost 2 years now and finally put in an offer that was accepted! We've done a lot of research and our dream has been to find land that we can garden, have a few chickens, build tree houses and forts, and basically just run wild and enjoy nature right at home. I have researched cordwood and cob building, even living in a yurt, but we always keep our options open and even living in a fairly conventional home is fine, as long as we have some land to get creative on.
We have looked at dozens of bare land lots, as well as fixer uppers (even in Portland)and several nice homes on 1/2 acre+ lots, and put in one formal offer on a cute cottage on 1/2 an acre across the street from the library, which was a wonderful location right in town, but our offer wasn’t accepted, even $20k OVER asking price in this market?!? Which tells you something about Stevenson real estate; it’s just not suffering as much as other parts of the county. We are very grateful that our offer wasn’t accepted however, as we were totally doing the Tevya thing; “On one hand…., on the other hand…” lol.
The arguments:
Pros: It was cute as a button, 1950’s Cape Cod, all wood, we knew the previous owner (he died there last summer), he created beautiful gardens, all mature, nice landscaped creek, walk to everywhere in Stevenson, BUT…
Cons: busy corner (this was a huge one for us, as it’s one of the busiest corners in town and we felt a LOT of trepidation about it), part of the lot is steeply sloped, tiny kitchen and dining room, and there would be a few older house issues (they all have some!).
Soooo, after that disappointment, we set out determined to buy land and have a new home built on it. We have looked at LOTS of properties over the past 2 years, as far north as La Center, WA (not counting the sneak peaks at Mat-Su land!), east to Goldendale, WA, as far south as Estacada, OR, and west as far as Banks, OR. Phew! We’ve looked at so many Columbia Gorge properties; I was offered a job by Mal & Seitz Real Estate to be an agent – no joke! They are across the river in Cascade Locks and I went looking at properties over there with an agent named Ginger. We talked so much and I shared with her so many different loan options & building/developing ideas that I really impressed her and she said whenever I want to take the exam, they’ll save a desk for me. She even called me later to assure me that she was serious. :-) I love educating people on their professions – lol! At least Ginger appreciated it and I may even take her up it, I would enjoy working with her some more and I am looking at future career options. I’ve also had to educate my loan officer over at USDA rural, but that’s another story which hasn’t been nearly so enjoyable and has caused me a lot of unnecessary stress. I am going to make this a single blog post and talk about the new property in it’s own post, up next! :-)