When Jodi Lynne and Matthew Adams loaded up their car and made the 3,000-mile journey from East Coast to West, they were entranced by the big skies and rolling ranches of Montana and Wyoming. So when the couple settled in Oakland—not exactly Big Sky Country—they couldn’t shake the idea that they needed a little more room to roam.

The couple began exploring what is left of California’s unexplored—or at least uninhabited—land and fell in love with an 80-acre parcel near Paso Robles’ San Antonio Valley.