In-laws move to rural cabin in Montana 5 hours away from the nearest airport, complain that their 4 children and their grandchildren never visit them

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Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor
Jul 30, 2026 8:30 PM EDT

Should the grandparents travel to their adult children and grandchildren, or should the children travel to their parents?

That is the question that has plagued families for generations, and there is no clear and easy answer. Many grandparents are unable to travel far to visit their adult children because they're aging and their bodies cannot handle long-distance travel. On the other hand, many adult children are not in a financial position to spend $300 on plane tickets each time they visit their parents. Not to mention, travel can be very difficult if you have young children who cannot tolerate discomfort for hours on end. 

IMHO, you can't complain about your family not visiting you if you live somewhere extremely hard to get to. You can't expect a young family with little kids to travel 10 hours to see you multiple times a year if you don't make any effort to travel and see them. 

Sometimes, it doesn't even matter if you live far apart. Some families live in the same town as their in-laws, and still only see them a couple of times per year. Whether you see your family or not really comes down to how much effort you're willing to put into your relationship with them. Some grandparents are a joy to spend time with, and others are a chore, and whether you are a joy or a chore is often a choice. The grandparents in this story are a bona fide chore. 

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A cabin in rural Montana, which is incredibly difficult for a young family who lives on the East Coast to travel to.
via Steven Cordes

A cabin in rural Montana, which is incredibly difficult for a young family who lives on the East Coast to travel to.

An image is a representation. 

Am I the bad guy for not wanting to visit my in-laws because they live in the middle of nowhere?

My wife and I have a 6-year old daughter and live on the east coast. My ILs used to live about 2-hours away and we visited them on a regular basis. About four years ago my ILs moved to Montana to fulfill their dream of living in a cabin in the woods. They built a big cabin assuming their kids and
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grandkids would visit regularly. Here's the problem. We visited them about two years ago and the travel was miserable. We couldn't get a direct flight so it took ~9-hours of flights including layovers followed by a 5-hour car ride to their cabin. By the time we arrived my daughter was melting down
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and my wife and I were on the precipice of a divorce. We knew the travel would be bad but it was much worse than anticipated. The drive to their house is particularly bad. We were all out of energy and there's nowhere to stop.
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A car is driving to a rural cabin in Montana on a road with very few places to fill up on gas or take a bathroom break.
via paje victoria

A car is driving to a rural cabin in Montana on a road with very few places to fill up on gas or take a bathroom break.

The car in this image is not the real car in this story.

My ILs are asking when we're going to visit again and I have no desire to go back. My wife isn't too keen on it either. I feel like an AH because when my ILs decided to make this move my wife and I were both enthusiastic about it. We talked about all the different outdoor activities we could do in
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Montana and definitely gave off the impression that we would be excited to visit. I can sense my ILs getting frustrated because none of their 4 kids, including my wife, are in a hurry to come visit again. I can definitely understand their perspective, but in my mind, I never would have anticipated
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Cheezburger Image 10652307456
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In-laws contemplate why none of their adult children and their families come to visit them in their rural cabin, far away from their adult children.

The situation is depicted by models.

how bad the travel would be. My wife's siblings feel the same way. AITAH? Also, regardless of your judgment, what would you do here? S k it up and travel? Break up the travel over a couple of days? Unfortunately because of my wife's job we
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can't take long stretches of time off; 5-7 days max including travel time.
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fluffyfeather80 How often have they made the trip back to visit? NTA but I think your wife and her siblings need to be honest with them about it. Moving that far away is not going to allow for frequent visits.
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WorldlyExercise6054 OP In short, they do not visit. Even when we lived closer the expectation was always that we would go visit them. Couldn't tell you why. My ILs are super generous otherwise. But you have to go to them.
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kisforkarol That's a very common expectation from a certain subset of parents of a certain generation. The onus is on their adult children to maintain the relationship - to visit, to call, to ask - and not on them to put any effort into maintaining the relationship. You know why they don't visit because it's the same reason you don't visit them. They don't want to waste almost 24hrs on travel. No one does.
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lisa-in-wonderland My parents and my in-laws were like this, expecting my husband and I to visit, despite both of us working and our daughter in school. Now that I'm retired and my daughter has her career, I go to visit her most of the time, or we meet somewhere interesting. I'm a gen Jones whose parents were the Silent Generation. My daughter is on the border between Millenial and Gen Z.
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TheAlienatedPenguin Generation Jones here. In the last five years my kids have not been to see me once. However, I have flown back to see them several times, most recently a few weeks ago. It costs me around $500 to fly, while for them one would be $1500, the other $2500. Does it s k? Absolutely! Yet when my kids were little, it was the same thing with my folks! The way I figure I can go back 5 times for their one time cost. No sense in getting angry or resentful, it's just easier for me to fly
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Top-Bit85 Now that they are retired they have much more free time than you do. If they can adjust to living in the woods of Montana they can adjust to being the ones that do the long complicated traveling. It was their idea after all.
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7Grencia Mars If you care about these in-laws, you need to explain that the travel time to get to them exhausts you. You're not doing them any favors letting just not telling them. Maybe there is come kind of middle ground destination? IDK. Did they not know how miserable you were the last time? I mean, you could just trek out there, pretend you love it, and keep doing that. You could also ask them to come visit you. There isn't an easy way around this, I'm sorry.
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Own-Rip-5066 Wanting to spend time with your grandchildren and moving 12+ hours away from them are interesting choices. ΝΤΑ
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LawComprehensive2204 We made a move to a big house thinking it would be great for holidays and grandkids. Has a pool, outdoor kitchen with 2 big screen tvs, pickleball court and basketball court in our backyard. Kids came to visit once so far. Town is boring to them (they are right) and the trip across Texas is long. We made the decision to move and are happy here, but after all talking about it, we found a solution.
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We are renting a house in a fun city with lots to do close to our kids city when we want to see them. Everyone is excited about this compromise. They love this town and the activities there and so do we. It's only a few hours from them (6 hour drive for us, but easier since we don't have young kids). Visiting them at their home is not an option as it is small. We'd have to get a hotel there, so why not spend that $$ on a place we can all enjoy. Everyone seems to love this idea. Get time together
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I am a more accommodating grandma as my mil was nightmarishly demanding and self centered, never thinking of hardships her stubbornness caused others to I'll never be this way!!!!
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rural Montana airport wife grandma granddaughter grandchildren husband father in law in laws mother in law Travel Grandpa cabin road trip
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