Lets Go to Idaho

I don't understand how ridiculous human minds can be. My body cannot move, but my mind is running 1000 miles per hour. All that is on my mind is the topic of the conversation my friend and I had tonight. LET’S MOVE TO IDAHO.


Why Idaho? I have no idea. Is it the wilderness, the elk, the fly-fishing, or the potatoes? I think mostly it’s the idea of moving away from North Carolina.  Idaho's geographical location is extremely fascinating to me, as it is on the east side of the Rockies and filled with rolling plains on the west side. I love North Carolina (this is where I live), but as I sat in the 95 degree humidity at 8 in the afternoon last night, I soon discovered that I would love to move to a new location, with cold winters and mild summers. I want to move to Idaho, find a job, buy some cheap land, and start a ranch.
All I want to be when I grow up is a stinkin cowboy. I want to wake up every morning, look across a prairie and say "O my goodness the cows sure did go far last night. Better go get them". And that’s it. I want this to be my job. Thrilling right? I want to ride around on my horse wearing a canvas jacket, and shoot an Elk from a mountaintop. I want to constantly be a little on edge, wandering if a cougar has been stalking me for weeks as they say they do. I want to fly-fish in the creek that runs through my property in the afternoons, and I want to sit on the porch of my farmhouse at night and play guitar. I want my dog to hop in the bed of my truck as I go to town to see the Butcher once a month. I want to walk into his kitchen and say, "How ya doin’ Bob? Here’s twenty more, grass fed cows, free of hormones. Pay up!" If I can get married along the way then great, but you tell a plan like this to a woman these days and they tell you let’s just be friends. Who cares?

I'm so scarred of getting sucked in to a typical after college career climbing an endless ladder. I’m at the point in life where I'm sitting around at the bottom of thousands ladders thinking to myself, "I don't know which one to climb..." Typically, I step up about three or four rungs and jump back down because I discover the ladder is too steep, or shaky, or is resting on a rotten roof (metephorically speaking). I want to build my ladder, putting it together gradually as I get comfortable at the heights I am at. I want to move away from all the sketchy ones, and climb mine at the pace that I want. Too bad this idea of thinking is what we refer to as "fantasy".
Think again, society, because I will work a typical after college job. At least until I can save the money to move to where I want and become a Rancher. This is where my ladder begins. Now I understand there are very complicated issues and expenses to deal with in the situation of buying land and starting a ranch, but to be general, think about this:

A typical, middle class home in major cities of NC runs anywhere from the 130k mark to the 400k mark. This type of money will buy you a beautiful little home in a new housing development right off the side of the beautiful interstate. You will have a pool, a gym, you will drive a mini-van, and you will take a weekly trip to Costco to find something healthy and nutritious for dinner. And, you can do it all with a total minimum salary of about 75,000-100,000 dollars between you and your lovely soul mate. You will be in debt, but you can do it.

In Idaho, the 80,000k mark (lower end, used home in NC) can buy you ten acres of this:
http://www.landsofidaho.com/idaho/?detail&inv_id=122717
If you get a nice little job out of college, the 199k-375k mark (still the price of your typical middle class home) can buy you this...
http://www.landsofidaho.com/idaho/?detail&inv_id=579340

http://www.landsofidaho.com/idaho/?detail&inv_id=901071

http://www.landsofidaho.com/idaho/?detail&inv_id=120660

Be sure and look at all of these so we see what we are missing. I love Gods Earth.

This is the end of my ladder: