It was manned by a local good old boy who appeared to be moonlighting from the sheriff's department and who clearly was taking his job oh-so-seriously as he peered skeptically through the van window at our entourage of pre-school bandits.

It didn't help that he couldn't initially find the pass left by the family we were doing the house exchange with - it took a couple cell phone calls to our new friends, who were then driving north to Natick, before we managed to get the gate lifted.

We spent a part of the next week checking out our community. With several hundred homes spread over a mile or two of rolling hills, Lake Holiday is effectively a town unto itself. The development generates its own power and water and includes a decent sized, well maintained lake.

The initial hassle at the guard shack faded - with a pass on the windshield we avoided any more border crossing inspections.

Prices seemed fairly reasonable - $180,000 and up for homes that would fetch three, four, five or six times that number here in Greater Boston. Of course, with Washington 90 minutes away, commuting into D.C. could prove arduous.

We spent the second week at another house - a rural farmhouse in Leesburg that is right on the Virginia side of the Potomac, with Maryland on the other side of river.

It was an interesting location - an early 1900s farmhouse on a several acre, wooded lot with no neighbors.

There was a even a chicken coop.

Still, there was one significant exception to the isolation - the house was right on a fairly busy state road, Route 15, in the shadow of an old, steel girder bridge that spans the Potomac.

On our second to last night there, Karen went into Leesburg to meet with an old college friend while I stayed home with the kids, ages seven, five and three.

It was quarter to 11 and I was upstairs trying to coax my five-year-old back to sleep when the doorbell started ringing insistently. I went downstairs wondering how my wife had forgotten the key only to find two scruffy young guys, say 18 or 19, standing at the front door and asking to come in and use a phone.

I stared at them, looked at the doorknob with its solitary lock, and quickly decided there was no way I was going to open that door.

"There's no phone," I blurted out, which made the shorter, sidekick of the pair incredulous. As he started to argue the point "how could you not have a phone" - I followed up with a simple but direct "go away."

Now I am sure it was all totally innocent - maybe it was my luck to have encountered the last two 18-year-olds in the country without iPhones on the doorstep of that lonely Virginia farmhouse.

Anyway, they left - and I didn't regret my decision.

It made me think twice about my assumption that somehow rural living is safer.

If anything, an isolated farmhouse, especially by a state highway, is a prime target for anyone looking to grab some quick cash or worse.

It's good to be back home in Natick - and to have neighbors once again as well.