New to the radio game

Good evening all. I’m just now starting to peer down into the rabbit hole that is radio operations. We going to be moving to north west Washington state this summer and I plan on spending a lot of time out in the woods and up in the mountains. I’d like to have some kind of communication with my wife back home even without cell signal. I am considering getting a nice base station at home and a powerful handheld to carry with me in the woods. I was looking at 8W with an extended antenna. Maybe even getting one that I can hoist up into a tree or something. Is this a viable option?