A lot of my colleagues have been taking trips overseas like Europe or to sunny beaches and cruises. While I don’t have much of an interest in doing that kind of vacation, I’ve been thinking more lately about taking an airplane and renting a car to explore a different part of America that I don’t know much about.

Probably with a rental car, I would travel the back roads and camp in dispersed camping in the National Forest back country. Stay as far away as possible from the tourist traps, see the real rural areas where folks farm and homestead, live close to the land. Spend time in the woods and learn about the real way things are. Visit local grocery stores and businesses, drive past real farms and small towns. Learn about the real culture not how the marketeers sell it.

Maybe in the era of interstate highway and the chain restaurants, a small towns are the same. After all, between Fox News and NPR America pretty much has one or two news narratives. West Virginia, in my experience is a lot more like Upstate NY than many would like to admit, the Monongahela National Forest isn’t that dissimilar to the Green National Forest or Allegheny. Dairies and cattle farms generally are pretty similar wherever you go. Factories and small towns generally have the same look and feel. Some places have stronger accents then others but aren’t that dissimilar. But I want to find out.

With the internet I am learning there is a lot more of America out there, places that share more of my values, and aren’t the high tax liberal places like New York State where it seems like we are loosing our freedoms every day. There are wide open places, not so dissimilar to New York with farms and mountains but without all the idiocy and work around that come from living in an urban oriented state. Places that actually respect the second amendment and gun rights. That don’t look down on rural life and practices necessary to manage nature for man’s benefit.

I hear a lot of good things about the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas. But also the big mountains of Idaho and the Rocky Mountain West. Tennessee is also interesting though I have questions about that state too. Wisconsin and Ohio in the Midwest are quite appealing away from cities, especially for homesteading even if they are quite flat.