The snow has melted in Colorado and our search for Jerry’s property is in full swing. We left Texas, camped in Oklahoma for a few days just to say we had been there, and then moved north to Colorado as quickly as we could. It felt good to be back.

Western Colorado is really our favorite region, but sadly, their real estate prices are completely out of reach for us. So we are focusing our search on the central areas, West of Pueblo from affordable Westcliffe, on up to pricier Red Feather Lakes, just West of Fort Collins. Some of these areas we had briefly been to last year, and others we were familiar with through friends.

Our search began by heading out to Westcliffe, to meet our online friends Lilla and Neal, who own property there. It was so nice to finally meet this Louisiana couple who we suspected we had a lot in common with (i.e., fellow animal lovers, DINKs, free thinkers and dedicated to simple living).

We spent a great weekend together. Lilla and Neal introduced us to their weekend getaway town that they love, spoiled us rotten with their Cajun cooking, and entertained us with their dogs, Nadia, Captain and George. When the gang had to head back to Colorado Springs for the workweek, they graciously offered to let us stay on their property for as long as wanted. What great people!

Since then, we’ve toured three different counties, and have learned a few things about looking for our land:

Much of Colorado’s prettiest rural land is held within subdivisions, most of which have their own set of rules (“covenants”) that dictate what people can and can’t do on their land.

Some make sense for their locations, like, you can’t leave unattended horses on your property, or open a dairy farm.

Other covenants border on fascism, and require minimum square footage sizes for homes, along with architectural plan approvals, supposedly in the name of keeping up property values.

There are also many covenants that prohibit owners from living in their RVs on their own land, even if the subdivsion is mostly vacant, zoned rural and allows for livestock!

“The county doesn’t want us to turn into a giant campground,” one realtor told us.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we want to do. Get some land, park our RV on it for the summer, build a garage so we can get our remaining stuff out of storage in California, and then head back to warmer climates in the wintertime. Maybe we would build a house on it eventually, maybe not. We want to keep our mobile lifestyle, but have a home base for a few months of the year.

Seems like a logical plan to us, but to a lot of uptight developers, they fear that we’d turn their tidy subdivision into Hooterville. We realize it’s a fine line between having a law of the land through covenants, and not allowing people who don’t respect their neighbors to move on in, but there’s got to be a happy compromise somewhere!

We got a good laugh when we realized that we, trailer living road trippers, are the property owners that a lot of people don’t want next door.