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Most remote BMWMOA member?

Zounds Paul and Voni! IÔÇÖve heard you describe your place in Texas and how you have tried to make your lives less complicated, but didnÔÇÖt realize how much you have minimized and simplified things. Annie and I are talking about doing the same thing and your example sets a high standard. I find we work to make money to maintain a house that is much more than we need, and buy other things we can do without. There is much to recommend having a place that is pure peace and a location to plan for your next road trip. Congratulations on taking the leap that others only talk about.

By the way the current temperature at the Fort Wainwright Army Airfield is -45 F. I was going to take a picture of the ice fog for the ice thread in the photography forum, but my camera froze.

It is freeing NOT to be owned by your things.

One thing we haven't simplfied is the number of bikes.

But there are so many good ones. AND I do have my own mechanic :whistle

even out here in the frontier!:usa

Voni
sMiling
 
I did no research to say this, but I read an article in National Geographic in the recent past, that was telling how there are virtually no places left in USA that are less than 20 miles from some kinda road- or something to that effect.
I live in the woods, back on a private road, in a cabin, in a county with zero red lights. May not look so remote on a map. but we enjoy our privacy and Wally World is only 30 miles away!
All you have to do is fly over USA @ night vs. our northern neighbor to see where the people are concentrated. I remember a few years ago, I was on the WY/CO border on a trout stream fishing and thinking how out in the boonies I was that day and the UPS guy comes trucking on by, so go figure... We used UPS to send a chair to my son in Iraq and he was flying out of a sorta remote airstrip at the time...
 
I'm not in the running, since there is Wally World and drive-through coffee in town (why don't you want to go inside and sit and visit?) and the nearest dealer is only 170 miles roundtrip.

But my county has only 35,000 people and is 3/4 the size of Connecticut. I used to say I lived on the edge of nowhere until I went to Yukon. There are plenty of places up there that definitely qualify for remote. Since all the provinces except the maritimes are bigger or almost as big as Texas, with far fewer people, perhaps our Canadian members need to chime in. :usa :ca
 
I was thinking "farthest away" too.
I'm in Saudi Arabia, but I'm not exactly remote here in Jeddah with its 3 million population including multiple McDonalds, KFC's, Burger King's etc.
 
I've been thinking on "remote" as compared to "isolated" since you can be pretty isolated but not necessarily remote. It's relative to your own frame of reference, too. A man from Iowa once told me they did a tourism study and qualified "tourist" as anyone who came from at least 100 miles away to shop or visit an area. I noted that in Montana, we usually call those kinds of visitors "family."
 
I've been thinking on "remote" as compared to "isolated" since you can be pretty isolated but not necessarily remote. It's relative to your own frame of reference, too. A man from Iowa once told me they did a tourism study and qualified "tourist" as anyone who came from at least 100 miles away to shop or visit an area. I noted that in Montana, we usually call those kinds of visitors "family."

Remote - hmmm, maybe remote means distance from intelligent life forms, or culture, or distance to the nearest civilization. I live in the southeast, so I prefer not to make any comments other than, I think living out in the wilds of Montana would be incredible. :thumb
 
I thought it would be fun to find out where our most "remote" BMWMOA member resides.
I know I'm not the most remote, but I would bet I rank up somewhere with the top ten!

I live ten miles north west of Reed Point Mt. http://www.city-data.com/city/Reed-Point-Montana.html

Short riding season, but when summer comes along we have some of the best roads anywhere. I'm within an hour of Red Lodge and the Beartooth Highway and just a short twelve hour jaunt west on I-90 to Seattle.
1. Nearest grocery store is a 64 mile rountrip.
2. Nearest drive through coffee (City Brew...montana starbucks) is in Billings 130 mile roundtrip.
3. Nearest BMW shop Missoula, MT 580 miles roundtrip.

Tell us what remote spot you're from.........

Cheers!

Mike

Nearest grocery store .5 mi.
Nearest drive through coffee .5 mi.
Nearest interstate 1 mi.
Nearest BMW dealer 1.5 mi.

No wonder it seems crowded!!!

Don
 
I can be remote, but only when preoccupied with something.
Otherwise I am warm and friendly.

I kinda live in the country , I guess.I turn right out of my neighborhood, and I dont se a stop light or sign for miles.
 
.

But my county has only 35,000 people and is 3/4 the size of Connecticut.

How in the world can you stand all that congestion. Here, Brewster county is larger than Connecticut with only 9,000 people - and 6,000 of those live in the few square miles of Alpine - leaving only 3,000 of the rest of us out in the country. And no traffic lights in the whole county either.
 
The R1200R is in the shop, and the F800GS is in my cold garage waiting for me to finish some wiring.

I feel very remote today; I think I qualify.

Fred
 
How in the world can you stand all that congestion. Here, Brewster county is larger than Connecticut with only 9,000 people - and 6,000 of those live in the few square miles of Alpine - leaving only 3,000 of the rest of us out in the country. And no traffic lights in the whole county either.

Holy cow! IÔÇÖm now feeling quite cosmopolitan up here in the Fairbanks Metroplex. Alaska now has more than 1 person per square mile and although about 400K of the 650K people live in the Anchorage megalopolis, IÔÇÖm beginning to feel like a bit actor in the movie Soylent Green.
 
Paul and Voni-

If you don't mind me asking, I'd like to know:

1) How did you find your current home? and
2) Is it really as old as it looks?

Great place regardless!
 
Paul and Voni-

If you don't mind me asking, I'd like to know:

1) How did you find your current home? and
2) Is it really as old as it looks?

Great place regardless!

Over the years, while teaching in Kansas, Voni rode down and camped in Big Bend National Park several times during spring break - if she got a decent weather window out of Kansas. I came down with her once or twice. So, after we retired and bought an old Winnebago motor home, the Big Bend became our first winter destination. We were staying just south of Alpine in the motor home when we noticed this property on one of our trips to the park. The first time I noticed the property I couldn't tell by looking whether the house and shop (old store) building were one property - or two neighbors with a shared drive, much too close together. And I couldn't tell by looking at the listing on the Internet either.

But by accident, walking our dog one day, Voni met the lady that owned the property and had it for sale. She had moved closer to Alpine, near the RV park we were in, and stopped to ask Voni about a stray dog while Voni was walking our dog along the highway. We all became good friends quite quickly - and we bought the house that March.

And it is not really all that old. The house was built in the mid-1970s - 1974 and/or 1975. It is constructed on a concrete slab - 50x50 - the house itself is 30x50 or 1500 sq feet minus the interior walls with approximately 9 foot porches front and back. When it was built the power lines did not extend this far - thus the old handbuilt wind generator to charge batteries which is in the front yard, and which is now a "landmark" and yard art. The second owner had the power lines extended so we are now the last property on the power lines coming north from Study Butte. There is a 25 mile gap north of us towards Alpine with no power lines until one reaches the power lines extending south from Alpine.

The exterior walls are constructed of concrete stabilized adobe - real adobe - about 14 inches thick. The interior walls (except closets) are also adobe, about 12 inches thick. The stable thermal mass properties of the adobe - absorbing radiant heat on a sunny day and absorbing cool night air in the summer - are amazing.

But you need to remember, and this is one of my favorite quotations:

"The conquistadors called Big Bend 'el despoblado', the deserted wilderness. Not many have ever wanted to live in this brutally harsh desert, not soldiers, not settlers, not smugglers. Even Apaches and Comanches were just passing through. - Until now."
Allan C. Kimball


For uncongested, dry, warm, winters - and summers only a few degrees warmer than Lawrence, Kansas from which we moved - this is a great place to live.

See: https://www.bigbend.net/users/glaves/adobe.htm
 
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