jaxadam
Well-Known Member
@jaxadam I think a lot of people like the idea of it for a vacation, but not a year round dwelling situation. WVA has some completely ridiculous weather patterns due to the vast forests and mountain geography, and usually made worse by the lack of state/county infrastructure. The town I live in now has more snow trucks than most counties in WVA, so when shit goes down it can really go down.
With that kind of lifestyle, basically any time anything at all goes wrong you're on your own. Lots of services just don't exist out there in those areas, like Uber or Doordash/delivery, kiss that shit goodbye completely. If you need 4WD to go there you're probably going to have issues with property services too such as propane. I had a couple issues with getting inspectors back into one place. A lot of folks rudely find out the cheaper "off-grid" living situations they formulated in their own heads do not line up with the actual philosophy of that lifestyle. Saving money on electricity by using solar, still costs a lot of money. Saving money on digging a well by using water from the creek, still costs a lot of money. Waste management, either really shitty or really expensive- don't gamble. Rebuilding the driveway and/or erosion abatement, costs a lot of money. Either due to maintenance or replacement it all adds up, and it's almost always more expensive because you are paying to do it for yourself out in the middle of BFE.
Then when you're shopping for one of these properties you'll find realtors who totally don't give a shit. They really just can't be bothered, it's a ton of work or shoulder shrugging (counts as work for them) because the deal is small potatoes compared to their Travis Tritt mansions or whatever the fuck else they do all day.
My whole step side of the family is from absolute BFE fucking out in the middle of nowhere West Virginia. I spent a lot of time up there growing up just camping for days on end in a ravine and popping groundhogs off of fence posts with a 7 mil mag (we're talking bye bye back half of the head). It's beautiful country for sure, but yeah, where they are is a straight gravel road up the side of a mountain and you're fucked if anything happens. Exactly what I want in a few years!