For real, it's closer than you think. Right now I'm living in a converted barn some farmer made, I wanted to move and I'm not even that far from a big city, county land about 40 min from downtown and I've got a couple acres and some horses. It's not even public property, it's a private street and sometimes the municipal PD will show up and get told (somewhat apologetically) to get fucked, it's the sherrif's territory. There are some private streets people have randomly bought by BLM land in the western states I'd look at, they're far enough that white flight hasn't totally caught up with them and you still get amazon shipping on time. America's a cool place.
If CA wasn't so awful it'd be amazing, they've got the best terrain for having fun. I'd love to move out to a little forest town to go riding all the time, but I just can't smile and nod along with upperclass white folk guiltily toeing the party line for more than an hour. Gimme the people that talk about randomly borrowing a tractor to make a four wheeler race course on their land for fun.