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Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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depends a lot on the area / demographics / geographics
My places are > 20 min to town / groceries / services
>30 min to larger town with colleges and lots of hospitals
and > 1 hr to international airport
I prefer 'paved road access' within 10 min of town (view lot with water / garden / shops / barns / extra living space and RV hook-ups for traveling friends)
but... in many rural areas (as I find TX....)
The neighbors have a God Given right (and seemingly the responsibility) to make your peaceful abode very UN-peaceful (living hell). (these are 5 - 10 acre lots, so not the separation of thousands of acres I have enjoyed at other times in rural abodes)
Yipping dogs (many ~ 5 - 10 per house)
'Sighting-in-the-rifle' every waking hour
Making sure they pop off a few rounds daily to hopefully put down Bambi at first and last light with the high powered rifle (open season yr round on 'non-native' species)
Dune buggies
Motorcycles
4 wheelers (no mufflers)
wrecked cars (Midnight auto salvage)
Burros
peacocks
roosters
speakers / rock band practice
erosion (jeep trails / excavation that wash out your newly graded driveway) and deposit tons of mud in your backyard
...
My rural sites in CO and PNW fortunately don't have these problems, but certainly could have them.
we talked about buying a mountain home or beach house,
but easy-to-access medical care trumps all. those remote locations
had hospitals an hour away even with the best traffic conditions.
Presently very rural. We've lived in every demographic area, including adjacent to a 300K city downtown and my least favorite area is tract suburbs. Our ideal? Near the central core of a small city with a very large (acre plus) lot. Naturally that is very hard to come by.
The neighbors have a God Given right (and seemingly the responsibility) to make your peaceful abode very UN-peaceful (living hell). (these are 5 - 10 acre lots, so not the separation of thousands of acres I have enjoyed at other times in rural abodes)
[list][*]Yipping dogs (many ~ 5 - 10 per house)[*]'Sighting-in-the-rifle' every waking hour [*]Making sure they pop off a few rounds daily to hopefully put down Bambi at first and last light with the high powered rifle (open season yr round on 'non-native' species)[*]Dune buggies[*]Motorcycles[*]4 wheelers (no mufflers)[*]wrecked cars (Midnight auto salvage)[*]Burros[*]peacocks[*]roosters[*]speakers / rock band practice [*]erosion (jeep trails / excavation that wash out your newly graded driveway) and deposit tons of mud in your backyard
Best to scope out the neighbors.
LOL! This^^^. I can deal with the burros, peacocks, guinea hens, roosters, bellowing cows, the occasional dog barking and even goats escaping into my garden. The rest especially the gunfire is annoying. It scares the bejeebers out of our dog and it takes hours to get her to come out from under the bed. Hunting season she practically lives there.
I do believe this very much depends on your age. If you are middle aged and planning on living out in the country for years to come, you need to take the "what ifs" into consideration.
-What if you are no longer able to physically take care of your country property
-What if at some point you can no longer drive due to age, poor reflexes, poor eyesight. How will you get to the grocery store?
-What if you need to be within a reasonable distance to a doctor or hospital say within 20 minutes or so
If you are a younger person, then I don't see these issues normally happening although they still can.
I am 71 & 6 months. Even though I tend to be a fretter, this is not something I have ever worried about. If I had a basket full of health issues and pill bottles had to be lined up on the kitchen counter, I MIGHT look at where I live differently. As it is, any of my major health issues have been trauma from snowmobile accidents and re-schooling some really sour horses that were ruined by humans.
"Nobody Owns Tomorrow". I am not going to live my life in a place I am not happy for the sake of convenience
I am 71 & 6 months. Even though I tend to be a fretter, this is not something I have ever worried about. If I had a basket full of health issues and pill bottles had to be lined up on the kitchen counter, I MIGHT look at where I live differently. As it is, any of my major health issues have been trauma from snowmobile accidents and re-schooling some really sour horses that were ruined by humans.
"Nobody Owns Tomorrow". I am not going to live my life in a place I am not happy for the sake of convenience
This to the max. It is the reason we moved away from our previous home, despite the conveniences.
So many responses here have included the convenient availability of medical care as a major consideration....you're expecting too much of medical care. If you're already all that sick, you probably can't handle the routine chores of rural living,...and if you're more than 20 minutes from a major, large, university type medical center, they're not going to "save your life" at the local 30 bed hospital.
As much as I loved the seclusion of living out in the country, weekends were a nightmare. Our location became a recreational spot for people, and 3 wheelers and trucks barreled up and down our dirt road, stirring up clouds of dust that settled in the house in piles of grit. Don't even get me started on hunting season.
My preference is a large lot just outside the city limits, but close enough to stores and other amenities.
Out in the boonies, for sure. I'll be living in a fairly rural area about 12 miles from a small town, which itself is about 10 miles from a larger town which is 15 miles across the water from a large city. It's so quiet on my lot that I can hear the silence and it's dark at night, plus the lots are all an acre+ with lots of trees for privacy. Not very much land, but I couldn't afford to buy or upkeep anything larger. We don't have any lot restrictions or HOA, but we do have a Road Maintenance group, which means the roads are paved, kept up, and plowed in winter. The neighbors are all as crochety as I am, so any ATVs or loud continuous noise is immediately taken care of, through foul means or fair.
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