To rural or not to rural?

I am sitting here in a hotel room in Atlanta Georgia.  This is the second
time my wife and I have been to this city.  The last time we were just
passing through on our way to Florida to get away from the Ohio winter.

This time it's a reconnaissance mission.  You see, there's been some shit
going down and we are fed up with where we live, the people in and around
Cleveland can go and get fucked.  If you've never been to Cleveland I
highly recommend you stay out.  In fact stay out of Ohio in general.  I think
I can count on one hand the number of good, honest, people who were not trying
to pull one scam or another.  It's pure shenanigans as far as the eye can
see.

On top of that there's winter.  Winter here is essentially half the year and
it's miserable.  Seattle and Portland have reputations of being gray, wet,
and gloomy but they don't hold a candle to Cleveland and it's 'burbs.

The company I work for, I work at home and they have offices in various states,
so I can move to anywhere in any of those states without having to change jobs
Technically I could ask to go 1099 (be an independant contractor) and move
anywhere in the US but there's not a lot of great options.  You see one more
problem with moving to Cleveland (from Washington 10 years ago) is that it's
cheap to live here (at least the housing prices).  This means when you want to
sell your house you're not making that much money and your options are
somewhat limited.  It was easy (financially) to move from WA to OH, very hard
to go the other way around.  Especially at my age where I'm looking down the
barrel of retirement (or at least not working) in ... oh 5-10 more years.

So Georgia.  I never thought I'd see the day.  Growing up in WA I always
thought "The South" was backwards, racist, stupid, etc...  It has a "rep" you
might say.  But the more I researched online the more Atlanta, and to some
extent, Georgia more broadly, seemed to be *a bit* of an exception to this
pre-judged image.

However, the prejudice so far as proven to be true in our travels (we've gone
by car so passed through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee) and ... OH MY GOD!
the cancer of white-christian-cultism is rampant in these parts.  It's
really too bad because I really like the geography of Kentucky.  It is a
beautiful and peaceful place but 100 foot tall christian crosses,
"HELL IS REAL" billboards, Trump Superstores. I mean it makes me want to vomit.

We finally got into Atlanta yesterday and was too tired to really do much
exploring.  We will set out today to get a feel for the place.  Is it too
humid for us?  Well, being April it's probably not the most representative
month, but it is warm (upper 80's (F)).  We don't really have an itinerary,
the plan is to just hang out, be here, feel it out.

The big question and somewhat of a point of debate between my wife and I is
should we be looking for a rural home or something more suburban.  I want
rural, I hate neighbors, I kind of just hate people in general.  I think in
my whole life I could probably count with both my hands (and still have a
finger or two left over for everyone else) the number of good, honest, caring
people that have come into my life that wasn't trying to use me, get me to
do something for them only, and was a true friend.

My wife feels that if "shit goes south" (civil war, nuclear war, famine,
whatever post-apocalyptic thing you can imagine) that we would need support,
people to help and be helped by.  But I think she's holding on to a vision of
the American people which doesn't represent reality.  In my opinion your
neighbors are far more likely to bust down your door and take what they want
than to lift a finger to help you.  Maybe I'm just being misanthropic but
I suspect the reality will lie somewhere between my beliefs and hers.

And then there's religion.  We both hate religion, especially the American
flavor of Christianity.  I am not going to write (in this post) why because
it would be tangent that would go on for ages and either you are one who
already knows why or you're deeply engrossed in the cult and have already
stopped reading lest your faith be tested.

My wife doesn't want to be around the ultra-religious people that (she thinks,
and maybe she's right) tend to live out in the country.  And she really
doesn't want to be around Trumpers with their Trump signs and flags and their
whole CULTure, which is pretty much 1:1 with the aforementioned CULTure.

I don't either, but to me the point is to not have neighbors at least not
ones that are within screaming distance of us.  I also don't think that city
dwellers are necessarily the polar opposite of those out in the country.  It's
not like people in the 'burbs are all forward thinking, progressive,
highly enlightened, securlarists.  They voted for Trump too and might even do
it again if given the chance.  They also go to church on Sunday and feel
rightous for having done so.  They, ultimately, are Americans just like the
ones out in the country and are no more to be trusted.  They're just hiding
more because in the city there's more cultures, peoples, and less tollerance
for bigotry, white supremecy, etc...

But, in Ohio and in our travels I still see the signs.  Even in the cities and
the suburbs there's the symbolics of Trumpism and Christian-Nationalism.  It's
a cancer you can't escape, possibly even if you could escape the country
right-leaning tendencies are becoming rampant everywhere.  Canada, for example.

We do want to be within maybe 30-45 minutes of Atlanta, want to be able to
get into town for supplies, hospital visits, be close enough to easily get
deliveries, etc...

But, no point in house shopping this week.  The plan for now is just be here,
walk some nature trails, explore a bit, drive around, just exist in this place
for a few days.

If/when we move here we'll get ourselves set up in a month-to-month rental
and start house shopping then.  Still, early discussions on what type of
living space we want are currently going on.

One vision my wife had and was "sort of" jokingly communicated with me was us
having a few acres and a handfull of chickens.  See, now I can get behind that,
true I'd be the one to feed the chickens because I'm the early bird that gets
up at 5:00 am but I can see that happening.  Except I don't think I could
kill a chicken, so I guess we'd have them just for the eggs.

.