That sounds pretty great. Where I am in southern Wisconsin, prices for land are pretty high. Starting at Milwaukee, it's high because you're close to the city, then it stays high going west because you're either close to Milwaukee, close to Madison, or sort of close to both. Suburbs are expensive, too. The closest I've found to something I consider affordable is an older part of town that isn't close to downtown. If I stay in town, eventually I'll look for a house there.

In my exploring in Upstate New York, I think once you're that far from the coast the prices stay low. In December I stayed a couple nights in Newcomb, New York. I think this was a former mining town, but I'm not really sure. It's pretty much just buildings along the two lane highway. There were some cross streets, but I don't think there were any streets paralleling the highway. There was no Verizon or AT&T mobile service, and there was just one restaurant twenty minutes away that was open midweek. There's another only fifteen minutes away that's open weekends. It's very affordable, but that's because the economy is so weak. So while you might be able to buy a little house on a couple acres of land for $70,000, it's really hard to find much for work. I look at it as a retirement goal before being a place to relocate to.

The Ohio Valley, though, has more work opportunities for me. I've probably turned my nose up at it, but now I'm not sure why. Each year it feels like there's less holding me to Wisconsin.