I titled this photo “What’s Not to Love?” because I love (almost) everything about living back here in the middle of nowhere.

Heading home is always a pleasure. Once I turn off the pavement, the half hour it takes to get to my house from there is pure sensory overload. I drive very slowly, looking at scenery, plants, and animals the whole six miles. It helped a lot when I worked full time, because the slow drive back in allowed me to adjust my mindset before I reached the house.

While that need to go slowly wears on a lot of people’s nerves, it’s one of the perks of living here to me

What’s NOT to Love?

Dirt roads means bumpy roads. That means I need to go slow so I don’t tear up the vehicle. There are some people who hate to slow down long enough to travel such roads.

That is not my problem. I love going slow because it gives me time to see things I wouldn’t see if I were going faster. Like which plants are blooming and when.

When it snows and I get to be the first one driving through it – that sort of thing carries a special sort of thrill hard to find elsewhere. But mostly it’s about the things I see.  Like the bobcat crossing the road and being lazy about it because I’m not moving too quickly, or the sight of turkeys strutting out in the fields.

If I’m really lucky I’ll get to see a bear… oh wait. I forgot. I’m supposed to be talking about what’s NOT to love.

Back to the point

Heading away from home isn’t always fun if I have to be somewhere at a certain time. To get anywhere on time means I can’t stop and enjoy the scenery as much as I might like. So that’s one thing not to love, I guess.

I have to leave plenty early to get anywhere at all, actually. For example, being a farmer’s market vendor means I have to get set up before the market opens. At the Fayetteville market, I have to have my tent all ready to go by 0700.

It takes me about an hour to put it all together. It takes about an hour and a half to get there IF nothing delays me along the way. So to get there by 0600 I absolutely have to have the truck rolling by 0430. Before that can happen, several other things have to happen. So it means my day on Saturdays start at 0300.

So I guess you could say having to get up way too early to get anywhere else early is one of the only things on the list of what’s not to love so much.

There are a couple of other things I could point out if hard-pressed. For one, if you have to work away from home, the drive to and from that job will eat up about 3 or 4 hours of each workday.

Another thing is the distance to a hospital if you become sick or injured.

So there are some drawbacks, but for me the pros outweigh the cons.

What About You?

What kinds of things would you list about what’s not to love if your daily drive meant a few miles of that road pictured above?

There’s another post of mine that you’ll like if you enjoyed this one. It’s called Why it Takes Me an Hour to Drive 12 Miles to the Post Office... or something like that.