OK John -- now that I understand your situation, I can make some suggestions ... I am not sure that what I am going to say will be what you or others might want to hear (indeed I wonder if this will generate any flames), but this is my experience --

0. -- a "zeroth thing:" when you are learning to fly frequency matters enormously. If you cannot fly at least once a week ... you are basically wasting your time, you'll make next to no progress. This is why "residential" commercial soaring schools can make sense -- you fly A LOT. The obverse of this is the bane of long-distance membership in a club ... and few clubs operate every day of the week, and many are generally weekends only.

1. It's pretty easy to solo (really!) -- and there are various degrees of soloing (more about that), but the hard problem for most beginning soaring pilots is to make the transition from having gotten solo, to actually being a confident glider pilot who can fly cross-country. As an old-timer CFI-G .... there's nothing more frustrating than doing the work to train a student to solo, maybe even pass the Private Pilot's Exam (PPE) and then see them disappear from the sport.

And sadly, that is more the norm than the exception.

2. LOTS of soaring pilots drive 3 hours each way -- I did for years; first living in the Bay Area and going out to Minden, then living in Seattle and going out to Ephrata. One usually does this by either bunking there one way or another... 3 day weekends etc.

3. If there are no local soaring enthusiasts and you are truly determined to be able to fly from someplace close to home then you have two choices -- get to the point where you can fly a motor-glider & buy one (this comes with limitations and is expensive) ... or ... start a soaring club! That's not as impossible as it may appear, if you can find enough like-minded people (like maybe 10). This means finding/arranging for a local tow-plane and persuading a CFI-G to come to you ... this is not out of the question (among other things often they are power pilots too, and that speeds their commute compared to yours).

Now, as far as "getting solo" there are (typically) very substantial differences in the commercial training and club-training settings. Commercial training is fast, expensive, and really oriented toward that solo. In almost all cases in the US commercial training is done in a SGS 2-33 ... a very safe, easy to fly, rugged glider. But this will postpone "the transition" to something that flies (and lands, the hard part) like a modern sailplane ... and the sad fact of the matter AFAIS is that most people who train commercially in 2-33s never go beyond solo, most don't even transition into a 1-26 (a fun low-performance single-seater that is a reasonable transition from a 2-33).

For years the "more advanced" trainer was the Blanik L-13, unfortunately an FAA airworthiness directive grounded them all. There is a successor to the L-13, the L-23, but it isn't all that common. Most instructors (me included) don't like it as much as the L-13, and they are disliked for being maintenance pigs. My club got rid of 2 of them for the latter reason.

The loss of L-13s has shifted most commercial operations back to training in 2-33s exclusively ... and as the gap between 2-33 performance and modern sailplane performance (and flying technique) grows fewer solo students stick with the sport, and I think that this is one of the things that is killing the sport in the US.

In Europe now the standard trainers are the Grob 103, the ASK-21 ... and gasp ... the DuoDiscus!

Given what I see as the realities -- here are my suggestions

If you can find a competent power CFI and arrange access to a Champ or Citabria or possibly J-3 cub (less attractive for some subtle reasons) in your area, my advice is learn to fly that first ... at least through solo, maybe all the way through the PPE.

This will be really efficient, and close to home. And if you can REALLY fly a Champ or Citabria, PARTICULARLY if you can do unruffled full-stall landings in a 10 kt crosswind ... then you can transition into sailplanes really quickly. The ability to land a taildragger in a a crosswind is exactly the skill set needed to transition into a higher-performance sailplane (although the "sight picture" is quite different.)

The 2-33 flies like a Champ without an engine -- I have literally done two tows in a 2-33 with a really experienced power CFI who flew taildraggers really well, said "go fly it solo" ... and he was entirely ready to do that.

From that skill base you can transition quickly to a 1-26, and after a bit of that transition from there if you want to.

The other way is to find training in a G-103 or ASK-21 (the latter are rare in the US). Mostly these will be clubs. Training in the club setting is very different than training at a commercial operation -- you put in a LOT more labor contribution, also a lot more "standing around time." And instructors in clubs (like me!) are usually much less eager to just get you solo ... why do that? Instruction (per se) is almost always free or very low cost in clubs, so there's no incentive (properly seen) to solo early, why take that risk?

I don't like to solo students until they are very close to PP performance -- you only need 10 solo flights and 2 hours (and some more instruction) before taking the PP exam ... there's no incentive in the club setting for early solo, when the goal is to get you through to really being a soaring pilot.