What is your rural area? Have you looked for dive shops in the area?

Scuba diving is way cool; I have 300+ dives now in 13 countries, and I often bring my gear along and sneak in a few dives on work trips. But as others have said, you want to treat it with respect; if you dive with awareness and training, you can dive quite safely but you can also get into trouble if you don't treat being underwater with respect.

Certification in a day is a bad idea. There's a lot of info to digest, and you want to practice skills in a pool before you venture to open water.

I got certified in New York (Long Island) but it was with four evening classes, two pool sessions, and then four open water dives.

As others have said, you can do the classes and pool sessions locally and then do the checkout dives in a warm spot over two days. That's what my wife did.

I also took the Rescue Diver course by making a three-day-weekend trip to Florida (well, I flew home on the afternoon of the fourth day because of the 24 hours no-fly-after-diving rule).

Do the Open Water course, and have fun diving!