Anyone here lives in the woods/mountain/remote area?

avatar33

e-Hustler
Dec 5, 2009
3,838
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Calgary, AB
I'm not talking about a suburb or a small town here. I'm talking about living in nature.

I know a few people who have cottages or 2nd homes in remote areas, equipped with high speed Internet and phone, but they can't spend much time there since they work in the city. Since we gay webmasters don't have to answer to anyone or be anywhere, I was wondering if some of you have made the big move and left the city life? I'd be curious to hear your experience...

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Yes, and my only complaint is that I havent been able to get pizza delivered in 10 years. I went to Miami for a couple of months a couple of years ago and had pizza delivered every night, just because I could.
 
if it's truly remote, how would you facilitate high speed internet?
 
Just recently bought a vacation home in "the woods." (nearest fast food restaurant is 45 miles away). I don't live there permanently just because I love city life too much to totally abandon it. Well worth the 2-4 month escape though.

Downsides to living in the sticks:

1. I have 2 choices for Internet. Satellite or terribly slow DSL. So I get to choose between 25,000ms latency or 384kbps bandwidth. YMMV.

2. Shopping selection sucks unless you make a 90 mile round trip. Like to wipe your ass with Charmin clouds? Too bad, you get Toilet Paper brand sand paper to wipe your ass with.

3. With 1 square mile of space per person you rarely see anyone else until you hit up the local general store. If you're a social type and not a neckbeard this could be an issue.

4. Mountain women are fat and hairy ... not a huge concern anymore as I'm about to be married. If you wanna get laid expect some rug burn on your dick.

5. Nearest airport is 70 miles away, makes business trips a bitch.

6. Everything is expensive because everything is trucked in.

7. Bad weather means you might not get supplies for weeks. Stock up.

8. You gotta be handy, try explaining to a repair guy he has to make a 90 mile round trip to fix your stove. If he accepts expect price to triple.

9. Medical care sucks. They have an emergency care facility but the nearest hospital is 45 miles away. Not too much of a concern if you're young ... just don't break any legs.

10. No weed hookups way out there.

Upside to living in the sticks:

1. You don't see anybody. I can stand on my front balcony in the nude and shoot at the insects with my AK-47 if I wanna. (you're totally going to want to do this)

2. Something about living amongst nature gives you this sense of "everythings gonna be alright" After most of a year in the city I need this.

3. Fat women keep you warm in the winter and they give better head.

4. You feel like a real man when you conquer nature ... or just fix your own fucking stove.

5. You can grow your own fucking weed.

6. If you have a highschool education you are smarter than 99.999% of the people in town.
 
I don't get it either, but all my friends who own cottages seem to have decent DSL connections. It's not ideal for online gaming or shit like that, but definitely fast enough to work with.

People I know in the sticks use satellite, but aside from latency, the connection is not dependable if there are adverse weather conditions.
 
I live in the woods and Satellite is my only choice for high speed besides mobile broadband. I use ViaSat and it's pretty reliable but good luck streaming anything with a 25GB/Month Cap.
 
If I see coyotes running by my window in the morning with dead cats and raccoons in their jaws - do I live in the wild? Or suburb Vancouver?

It's a tough draw.
 
Just left Montana for South Florida a month ago. I wasn't in the boonies by any means, just outside of town. Having a place "in nature" away from everyone sounds great, and it is for a bit. Gets to be a hassle though, so you'll prob end up getting a place closer to town after you get tired of it. Internet (if you can get it) sucks, driving for an hour for gas, groceries, etc blows. Amazon prime is a lifesaver though.

On the upside, for 2 or 2.5 months, you'd have a pretty hard time finding a better place on earth. I don't snowboard as much as I used to, so from here on out when I see snow it'll be on my terms.
 
I could provide a ton of insight here, but I'll leave it to the elder mountain men of the community to get their say first. MeatyTreats, Grindstone, would you guys like to use your canes and walkers and stand up and say anything?
 
I did for a while, but when I ended the relationship I was in at the time, I wasn't going to stick around. Small Midwestern towns like the one I was in are horrible for dating if you're not a nice simple church girl who wants to raise a family with a nice simple church boy. I don't want to generalize too much because I know there ARE interesting people in small towns - but in my experience, most are very bland and family-focused (because most of the people who want excitement and stimulation leave).

Cheshire raised a lot of good points - some other things I noticed...

Internet access was difficult, mostly because of all the trees. You need a good view of the southern sky for satellite, so getting access required a couple hundred feet of cable down the hill (the dish was at the top of the hill). Anything more than light rain would kill the signal, too.

Cost of living was amazing. Rent on the place below was $425/month (and the lake is just below where the image cuts off), and groceries were probably 1/3 of what I pay now in CA (though the difference would be smaller if you accounted for food quality).

Food - Surprisingly, food is kind of a big issue if you like eating well. A lot of small towns have either Wal-Mart or junky little grocery stores...so good produce and "weird" ingredients can be hard to come by. I like to cook, so even spending a few weeks in my rural hometown makes me a little crazy. Restaurants typically suck, too, unless you pick a small town with a decent amount of tourism (like some lake towns).

Design/Style - If you like your place to look good, you may have to build something or do a complete renovation. Most houses in really rural areas are ugly on the inside. That's especially true if your tastes run modern.

Weird Privacy/Lack of Privacy - On one hand, the guy I was dating would regularly walk outside and urinate in the bushes. Nobody saw or cared because there was no one nearby (though I found it a little gross). On the other hand, you can't go into town without people seeing you, talking to you, commenting on your purchases, inquiring about your personal affairs, etc. People would approach with comments like, "You know, I saw so-and-so buying condoms the other day, but I remember Debbie saying her husband had a vasectomy...you don't think she's having an affair, do you? Or maybe she's getting them for her son...oh dear Lord let us hope not. I pray for them, I really do..." The smaller the place and the longer you're there, the less privacy you'll have.

I would consider living somewhere kind of remote again if I were married, but definitely not before that. It's peaceful, but a little too quiet if you don't have someone around to keep you company. I think the ideal, though, might be something that's both rural and upscale (like Napa/Sonoma) where you get the best of both - lots of space + reasonable access to airports, technology, culture, good food.

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Do you have specific questions or just want to know?

I've been really rural for over 5 years now and could answer your questions but there's a TON of things to just "know" about living rural vs city so I'm not sure which direction you're looking for. (I'm about 50 miles one way from anything people know by "name", 1 stop sign in that time)

Do you want to know about farm life and animals?

Do you only care about the internet, tv and tech?

Do you want to know about power?

Do you want to know about snow, wind, and the weather?

Do you want to know about driving 1hr each way to eat out?

Do you want to know about making sure you have on hand what you need so you don't spend all day driving around?

Do you want to know that itnernet is really expensive for quality, or cheap for shitty worthless internet.

Do you want to know how it is having friends visit less?

Narrow down your interests, and curiosities and I'll gladly assist :)
 
@ToddW Ok let me ask you this: are you able to be just as productive in the sticks as if you were in the city? What are some of the worst problems you had to deal with? What do you miss the most about city life?

I guess I just want to hear about experiences. I'm definitely not ready to make that move yet...
 
I did for a while, but when I ended the relationship I was in at the time, I wasn't going to stick around. Small Midwestern towns like the one I was in are horrible for dating if you're not a nice simple church girl who wants to raise a family with a nice simple church boy. I don't want to generalize too much because I know there ARE interesting people in small towns - but in my experience, most are very bland and family-focused (because most of the people who want excitement and stimulation leave).

Cheshire raised a lot of good points - some other things I noticed...

Internet access was difficult, mostly because of all the trees. You need a good view of the southern sky for satellite, so getting access required a couple hundred feet of cable down the hill (the dish was at the top of the hill). Anything more than light rain would kill the signal, too.

Cost of living was amazing. Rent on the place below was $425/month (and the lake is just below where the image cuts off), and groceries were probably 1/3 of what I pay now in CA (though the difference would be smaller if you accounted for food quality).

Food - Surprisingly, food is kind of a big issue if you like eating well. A lot of small towns have either Wal-Mart or junky little grocery stores...so good produce and "weird" ingredients can be hard to come by. I like to cook, so even spending a few weeks in my rural hometown makes me a little crazy. Restaurants typically suck, too, unless you pick a small town with a decent amount of tourism (like some lake towns).

Design/Style - If you like your place to look good, you may have to build something or do a complete renovation. Most houses in really rural areas are ugly on the inside. That's especially true if your tastes run modern.

Weird Privacy/Lack of Privacy - On one hand, the guy I was dating would regularly walk outside and urinate in the bushes. Nobody saw or cared because there was no one nearby (though I found it a little gross). On the other hand, you can't go into town without people seeing you, talking to you, commenting on your purchases, inquiring about your personal affairs, etc. People would approach with comments like, "You know, I saw so-and-so buying condoms the other day, but I remember Debbie saying her husband had a vasectomy...you don't think she's having an affair, do you? Or maybe she's getting them for her son...oh dear Lord let us hope not. I pray for them, I really do..." The smaller the place and the longer you're there, the less privacy you'll have.

I would consider living somewhere kind of remote again if I were married, but definitely not before that. It's peaceful, but a little too quiet if you don't have someone around to keep you company. I think the ideal, though, might be something that's both rural and upscale (like Napa/Sonoma) where you get the best of both - lots of space + reasonable access to airports, technology, culture, good food.

CI7B59x.jpg

That's an amazing looking place for $425/month! Sucks for the Internet though. I guess that would be my #1 problem. I can deal with a lot of shit that comes with living in the woods, but bad Internet would kill my productivity.
 
@ToddW Ok let me ask you this: are you able to be just as productive in the sticks as if you were in the city? What are some of the worst problems you had to deal with? What do you miss the most about city life?

I guess I just want to hear about experiences. I'm definitely not ready to make that move yet...

Just as productive: Yes. I have no problem working as much as I want. It requires a little extra effort living rural to manage this. The main thing for me at the beginning was power, and then it was internet a couple years later as far as any issues go.

Power - Solar, Generators or both. Size as efficiently as possible for your load, and if you have large varying load buy 2 generators. IE: Running my house/office vs running my well pump, welder, etc. No need to use 4x or more fuel per-day when you need to conserve. Solar cost a lot still, and with a power bill of 60-90 it's hard to justify with grid power. (We have an electric dryer and sometimes use high draw devices.)

Water(power) - Don't waste it. Store as much as you can as usable as you can. IE: If you can afford 6 pressure tanks do it before you spend money on 5g water jugs for storing extra water. Sure, you need 5g water jugs but don't buy 20 of them before you add another pressure tank to your system so you and your family have water "on tap".

Internet - 3G that WORKS is fine for me to get things done. 3G that's spotty will NOT work. For me it was fine and then something happened and it stopped working, and now with 4G it's no better and calls often won't even come through. I used an antenna, antenna + amp, and different antennas until it was unusable and then upgraded to a dedicated business circuit. Depending where you live you most likely can get Satellite 350+/mo very limited data transfer, med/high latency, Ethernet over copper $$, 1 or many T1 lines. In some denser areas there are rural providers too.

The biggest difference I believe anyone will notice coming from the city is the time it takes to do something and how there is no such thing as a quick trip or a quick errand. It will be hard to justify a trip where the travel time is the same or more than the purpose of the trip... especially true for places you don't want to go ;)

Most likely quality, reliable contractors will be hard to find. After many calls we had 3 that were able to show up and none followed through. Luckily we had a referral to someone that was even semi-local who did very good work.


You gotta be a problem solver that's for sure.


We drive 1hr to big box stores to do our shopping, we are often down here anyway. Town has anything we could need in a pinch. When diesel was high it cost me about $16-20 round-trip for Home Depot runs and anything "In Town", add a speeding ticket to one of those... and the contractor picked up the rest of the supplies :D

Most people help people.

Drives to town are peaceful, and often when I get great business ideas. No stop signs, no signals, etc.
So, having to drive 1hr 1 way to get a burger often results in breakthrough business ideas!
 
Im not rural to where I need to have solar, but I am not in the city either.

I'm right outside of several smaller sized cities and 1 large metro so I sit outside of all of them somewhat ( the outside of them all just happens to be in the middle though ). I was born and raised in the large metro, so I have somewhat experience in semi-rural and city life.

We first bought property way out in the rural part of this community to where the only option I had for internet was 56k ( this was like 6 years ago too ). Issues that came up where:

1. Everything closes at like 9pm.
2. If it rains, snows, is too hot, or the wind blows then you have just lost power.
3. In the event of a power outage, your looking at days to get it back
4. No one around you for privacy, but everyone knows everything about you or makes it up.
5. It gets real damn dark at night
6. Animals, stray cats and racoons. Coyotes and all kinds of shit get in your garbage.
7. Well water... better buy a lot of salt.
8. Spectic tanks. Better clean that shit and get on RidX monthly plan.
9. Bugs, lots of damn bugs
10. Your neighbour ( if you ever see them ) prob makes meth, moonshine, or knows someone that does.

We have since sold that house and moved a bit closer ( but still outside ) to one of the smaller cities in a private gated community. I still cant get cable and everything closes at 9pm, but its a bit more civil.

I still live about 2 football fields in any 1 direction from my nearest neighbour and thats alright by me since all that area is wooded and private.
 
I've always wanted to, but I'd just be paranoid as fuk that some dodgy drifter would break into the house in the middle of the night and the nearest help would be hours away, or even worse...














































































No one would hear my screams.
 
i lived in the sticks 2004-2010. was stuck with DSL for years... i rented a cheap apartment in a comcast area (high speed, multi-IP per account), put a dozen machines in it on a rack. went back to the woods & accessed them remote.

lake living. (that's my boy Gus catching some rays).

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