Time to leave Alaska

So arrived the 22nd of April, marking the day we are leaving, first our home in Two Rivers and then in couple of days, Alaska.

The last weeks we have been extra busy house sitting the farm at our home. Taking care of the dogs, cats, goats, chickens, ducks and other birds was again lots of fun and of course lots of work. This time we weren't alone though and sharing the chores with Nick helped to save some time. Nick also introduced us some nice American treats, like S'mors, and some weird ones, like strawberry milk. The weather was very springy at first, then it got cold for a week and we also had a snowstorm and a few inches of new snow on the ground. Now it's warm again and snow is melting fast. 

Days went by feeding the animals, milking the does, walking the dogs and then feeding everyone again. In between Piia tried to keep up with the big amount of milk we got from the barn and made some cheese, mainly feta and halloum. We also had many eggs daily so it was a good chance to bake things to eat for our upcoming road trip to Canada. Julien was busy doing chores in our other housesitting place and also creating a real website for us and for our travels. So the days were pretty much full.

Reedy saying Piia's in his place

Besides the animals that live in the farm, we also dogsitted friend's four-month-old husky puppies and one Saint Bernard, so you can say we had our hands full with happy energy. 

It got busier and busier at the end, since we had two cats and two convalescent dogs in our cabin, the other one recovering from a leg amputation and the other one from a surgery after eating a glove. So there was no time or room left for packing and organizing, but we didn't mind. The main thing was that the animals were doing fine, we could do our preparations later.

Sugaree, the strongest three-legged dog ever

And that we did. On Sunday we finished the house- and dogsitting and started clearing out our stuff. And it kept going until late Sunday night and continued until 3 pm on Monday. Yes we slept a bit and had the last dinner with Kerry, Scott, girls and Nick. But other than that, there was no time for anything else.

Preparation pictures

So now the car is packed and the other stuff are waiting for us in Two Rivers for when we come back in fall. And it's time to go.We are very excited to see Canada and how it's gonna feel like living on a road for a while. Of course we are going to miss Alaska but it's time to continue the adventure.

Again we want to thank everyone who was involved in our Alaskan escape, we had a blast and enjoyed our life here fully! We want to also thank the blog readers, we were extremely happy to see people liked and read our blog since one of our passions is to share our travels with other people. Stay tuned for updates from Canada!

And speaking of which, we have created a website where you can read about us, our travels and adventures and check some pictures. On the front page you can also see a map that shows our location everyday so you can follow us on the road and later on the hiking trip. 

Hope you like it! :) http://escape-life.net

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Life as farmers

If you have followed this blog for a while, you already know that the concept of house sitting is strongly present in Alaska. This is due to the fact that most people have animals (goats, chickens, dogs...) so when people leave for a holiday they need someone to take care of everything.

Since Scott, Kerry and the girls wanted to spend the last two weeks of September in Pennsylvania ("Outside", like we say in Alaska about lower 48 states) visiting their families, and Julien didn't go back to work until October, it was Julien's job to take care of the animals and other tasks that needed to be done by winter.

Like we have mentioned before, Kerry and Scott have goats, chickens, ducks, a rabbit, a quail and dogs and cats that needed to be taken care of. Julien's job was also to cut and till some of the fields in the property and getting ready for winter. Piia was also able to stay at home because we did a lot of extra hours at work before. Her tasks were mainly food related, meaning baking, cooking and making cheese. It was a perfect setting, since we had unlimited milk and egg reserves.

It is useless to tell you how we enjoyed this farmer life!

In the morning Piia took care of the barn while Julien fed the dogs. Sometimes we would wake up with a beautiful runrise...

It took us usually one hour to do the chores, and then, since we have lots of eggs, Julien baked some crepes for breakfast. Then it was time for Julien to go outside to take care of the fields, the tractor, the wood or whatever was needed. In the meantime Piia did some cheese or yogurt experimentations and made something really good for lunch or for dessert (we had a lot of desserts :) ).

Usually Piia went for a walk or for berry picking with the dogs during the afternoon. The dogs enjoyed running around the fields and forests, and despite the relatively high average age of the dog group, they have a lot of energy!

At 6 pm it was time to feed again so Piia went back to the barn for feeding and milking and Julien took care of the dogs. He also had to take care of the electricity, since the solar power is decreasing the closer we get to winter, so a generator had to be run whenever the power was too low.


After we had a good dinner with salad, cheese, potatoes, eggs and cakes... And sometimes pizza, with homemade mozzarella...


And we watched a movie with the company of the two cats, Clyde and Lenny.

The sunsets were pretty amazing as well.

For the night we just run to our cabin on the other side of the yard...


Now the two-weeks-as-farmers is coming to an end, though we keep on helping with the chores as usual. It was an amazing experience, and despite the couple of lost nuts of the tractor, never-stopping pain in the hands caused by milking and near freezing temperatures in our cabin (since we didn't warm it because we didn't spend any other time there than sleeping) we consider this as a success and we enjoyed it more than we could have even imagined.













We also wanted to get more involved with the Two Rivers Dog Musher Association, so on Sunday we volunteered in a Rabies vet clinic, where people brought their dogs to have a vaccination. We certainly saw why it is said that in Two Rivers there are more dogs related to the population than in any other place in the world. We met many mushers with their dogs (almost 400 dogs were vaccinated) and it was exciting to help. Here is a video of the day, by TRDMA.

For Julien it was a nice holiday month full of amazing colors and fun outside. And on Sunday, WE GOT THE FIRST SNOW, that got Piia jump out of the bed faster than you could say "freezing"...

Now it's time to go back to work at SNAP, also for Julien, and wait for the winter!

 

 

Roadtrip to Denali, "the real wilderness"

Last week offered us a chance to enjoy a small summer holiday, since Wednesday was 4th of July, the Independence Day! So we decided to do a roadtrip to south. We started the trip on Wednesday morning, direction Denali National Park and Preserve. We spent the first night near Healy, 180 km (111 miles) from Fairbanks (for those who know movie called “Into the Wild”, Alexander Supertramp's bus is located "near" Healy!).

Pics from the first day

We had reservation for the 7.00 am bus to Denali Park. You can only enter the park by busses and since we wanted to hike a bit and stay one night in a tent, we had to get a backcountry permit. That meant watching a video about surviving in wilderness, getting some tips from a park ranger and reserving an area where you were going to camp. They allow only certain amount of people in the park to diminish the impact, it is, they say, after all “true wilderness” what you experience in Denali… You also have to have all the food and cooking device in a bear container.

So having all this information and device we headed to the park. The bus was almost full, mainly of tourists, the fact that drove us crazy. But it got easier when we spotted our first wildlife: two bears eating in bush next to the bus.

The bus

The Bears

 That was very exciting to see and almost made up the price you have to pay to enter the park (bus + entrance fee). Later we also spotted caribous, and of course, the amazing landscape of Alaska Range. Mountains and deep and wide river valleys dominated the view and the park road passed so deep up and downhills it felt sometimes like in a rollercoaster. What a ride! And we also saw a nice view of Mt. McKinley!

We went with the bus until Eielson Visitor Center that offers exhibition about the park and its wildlife, and also very nice view to the surrounding landscape.

After we headed back to our area that we reserved for our hike trip. It was located near Toklat river and we started to hike along the wide river basin where water only covered maybe 10 % of the ground. We were calling the bears to let them know we were there. We didn’t see any, but we were sure they were there...

After hiking a while we spotted almost dry creek basin on right side and decided to climb along that to the uplands in distance. On the way we saw caribous, one just passed us from 5 meters! The wildlife here doesn’t seem to care about people here at all. The fact that makes it maybe not-so-wild anymore…

Finally, on a top of a hill we found a perfect place for the tent. Water was near, ground was grassy and plain, and the view was amazing. Couldn’t hope for any better spot! Before doing anything else, we had a nap on a grass… During the evening we climbed in a higher hill surrounding our camp place and saw moose running, maybe escaping something we didn’t see. And we also saw nine Dall sheep climbing on a mountain next to ours. So we had seen the Big Four of the park. Good job! The weather continued to be sunny and warm all day and evening. Nice opportunity to just sit down on a summit and enjoy the landscape!

The night was very windy but our tent handled it very well and we woke up after nine hours of sleep. The weather was again sunny and warm. Because we had only booked one night in wilderness, we had to head back to the road and bus. On bus we saw again caribous and bears, nice way to end the wild experience.

After getting back to the park entrance we also visited the dog kennel and the visitor center.

Then it was time to decide what we were going to do next. Since we had the whole weekend, we decided to drive the famous Denali Highway, about 200 km (130 miles) long drive along Alaska Range. Most of the road is gravel road and it is described to be very popular among campers, hikers, hunters and fishers. And yes, the informal campsites beside the road were occupied and we saw RVs everywhere. Finally we also found a nice place for our car and camped the night watching rain clouds moving along the Alaska Range.

On Saturday we spent in the car. First finishing the Denali Highway and then driving back to home by the same road we took three months ago on our first road trip. We stopped for lunch at a same place we had lunch then, when the mountains along the road were still covered by snow. Then we had another stop next to Donelly Dome, that we climbed last time on our roadtrip. We had nap and spent time reading and relaxing. Finally when we reached Delta Junction, we decided we can’t come the whole way without having burgers and French fries in our place, the Alaskan steakhouse. It was good again, and we were still bad at playing pool…

After we decided to finish the trip and drive directly home since it was raining. Well done Subaru, over 800 km (500 miles)!