Bits and pieces from last week

One more week has passed here in Alaska. It's a bit crazy how fast time goes by now. Next week will be our last week at work. I mean, what?? And in one month we will leave Alaska. Again, what??








We get busier and busier as the time of departure approaches. Like mentioned before we are heading to Canada, the departure date will be the 22nd of April. We have now purchased almost all our gear for the summer backpacking trip and we spent most of the weekend sorting and listing them. We have also started sorting and packing the stuff that we will need in Canada for six months, and the stuff that we will leave in Two Rivers.

We are still able to find some time to enjoy our weekends. Last Saturday we had a barbecue dinner and meeting with the Mile 101 crew. It was so great to see again all those people with whom we had so much fun some weeks ago. As we left Peter's place we realized that we would have to say more and more goodbyes in next couple of weeks. Even though you know that you have to leave, and you are very excited about the next adventure, it's pretty hard when it's time to say goodbye.

On Sunday we enjoyed the sunny weather by doing some outdoor cleaning and wood piling. The temperature is between -10 and 0 °C so when the sun is shining it is pretty warm outside.

Julien tried some adjustments with our tent, making sure we are ready for  the summer. He also took off the back seat of the car in order to have more space for our 6 month road trip in Canada while Piia was out with Kerry and some dogs.





We took a day off on Tuesday and it ended up being a great opportunity to spend some time with Nick who is rarely around during the weekends. We had lunch together and Nick offered us new culinary experiences with extra  hot horseradish and triscuits. Nick likes mountaineering so we had some interesting discussion about outdoor gear and nutrition. 


After lunch we went  for a walk with Barges who is now our walking buddy, Keeper and Nick's dog Cooper. We walked until Flat creek which is pretty impressive looking creek now with its huge overflow. The weather was nice as it has been since many weeks now.

 

Meeting friends and planning future events

As most of you know probably, we are volunteering for the Yukon Quest at mile 101, a remote checkpoint with an amazing location, blocked between Rosebud summit (not as famous as Eagle summit but believe me it is as hard) and Eagle summit, I think that we can say that this checkpoint is usually pretty popular for the musher and dogs to rest and refocus.

The picture is from last year, this year it goes the other way so from Whitehorse to Fairbanks
(www.yukonquest.com/site/yukon-quest-trail-map)

Piia will be checker and help with dog yard and other tasks in the checkpoint. It is going to be really exciting, we hope that mushers will understand her accent after many hours of effort climbing Eagle Summit.
Julien will be in charge of communication, which is exciting since mile 101 is SO remote.

We are really looking forward for this adventure and hope that everything will go smoothly! We will try to get some pictures even though we are going to be pretty busy when musher will arrive. We are going to know who is first in mile 101, after that the musher will cross the Two Rivers checkpoint and cross the finish line.

We had a meeting about that on Friday where we met most of the crew and we planned the work we have to do there, we will leave the 8th of February and we expect the first mushers around the 10th.

Last week we also met many of our friends. On Thursday we visited our co-worker Lena's house and enjoyed dinner with Lena and her husband's cute 6-month-old son Gideon. 

On Saturday we had dinner with Scott, Kerry, the girls and our new "neighbour" Nick, who moved to the guest cabin and is taking a mountaineering class at UAF. And on Sunday we had a game night in Torben's and Danitza's place. So it was a very nice week with nice moments with very nice people.

Another hot news for us this week, the almost confirmation that Julien got a working holiday visa for our stay in Canada, it makes things a lot easier even though Piia can't get it. It will allow him to work with a real contract and to earn some money. Piia would be considered as common in law partner since we have lived together more than one year and will be allowed to stay in Canada but not to work.

We have a crazy project which could allow us to stay active in our domain of study while traveling, one of our solution could be to create a micro company in Europe and to charge our clients Canadian or US as international clients, that way we could do some remote work and enjoy traveling. But well we will see if this idea go somewhere if you know something about international umbrella company or societe de portage in french, let us know!

Coping with and enjoying the cold weather

There's only one way to describe last week: cold! We could use the word "freezing" but knowing it can and probably will get colder at some point, we save that term for later.

Our thermometer didn't rise much above -35 last week, and during the weekend we hit the record, -43 C degrees. It sounds a lot worse than it is, and with good equipment we were able to enjoy the whole weekend, specially outside! 

We started the first day of December with old buddies, suklaahippukakku (chocolatechipcake) and dog team notes. It reminded us of Nellim in Finland, so greetings to Christophe, Marie and Julia. And thank Piia's folks for the cake!

We went mushing, you can take a look at our post about our Escape dog team here. We also made a snowmachine trip to the nearest creek, Flat creek and enjoyed the beautiful winter ambiance.

On Sunday we went skiing through forest next to the property and along the Flat creek again. Piia was singing Christmas songs and the spruces around us looked like shiny Christmas trees with sun reflecting from the frosty branches with million colors. What a way to start December and Christmas season!




We both also have a Christmas calendar, Piia made Julien one with small secrets inside, and Piia was surprised to reveice a great one homemade by her friends from Finland. So we now know what we do the first thing in the morning!

Near -40 degrees causes some adjustment in the cabin and with the car. The propaine stove stops working at these temperatures, so the only way to cook is to use the wood stove. Which is fine since we have to burn it hot to keep the cabin warm anyway. Since we don't have electricity to warm the car at home, we run it at night before going to bed, then Julien covers it for the night, with blankets. That way we only have to run it for 20 minutes in the morning before going to work. Monday morning was challenging, since the car was totally frozen after the cold weekend. So housewarm generator was running three hours before Subaru decided she's warm enough to start. Luckily people here know what it is to life with the extreme cold, so being late from work because of car problems is a natural thing!

The equipment for starting a car in cold weather without electricity

 The equipment for keeping your cabin warm and yourself and the dogs fed

Just everyday life here

Passed couple of weeks we have spent mostly what you could call "everyday life" here.





We have worked long days since we were covering the holiday week we spent with Piia's family. Then coming home means burning lots of firewood since the temperatures have been close or below -30 °C most of the evenings. Our record by now is -35 °C and this week it might get even colder. But nothing is better than coming in to a warm cabin after being outside feeding barn animals and dogs, having a cup of hot chocolate and maybe playing a card game or two, or reading a good book.The sun is setting now before four o'clock so the cabin is full of nice ambiance. Especially when the sky is full of colours... 

 

 
 

We have considered ourselves lucky since our oldish Subaru have worked like a dream and started every cold morning we have had, except one. That special morning we had to bring inside a generator to warm it, before we could warm the car. It turned out that the wire in our car didn't work after all, so we had to start the car cold anyway, as we do every morning anyway. After that we have heard occacional weird voices around the car and it sucks oil like there's no tomorrow. But until now it's still been working. So we hope for the best, and fear for the worst.

 

Last week we finally became a member of the Two Rivers Dog Mushers association and we attended our second meeting. It is nice to be involded with the people who are living in our community, specially since it's all related to sled dogs and mushing!





And by the way, by the end of this month, we will have dog team of our own! Kerry's friends Sarka has been looking for someone to run her dogs since she hasn't time for that anymore, so we came up with an idea that we could have at least six of her dogs in our place for two months and run them whenever we can. So Piia's dream is coming true and we will be mushers for a while! So stay tuned for musher stories in future. After all, mushing is the thing to do here, specially if you live in Two Rivers, Alaska!

Until that we just deal with a squirrel that still steals our toilet paper. And last week we found a mushroom cache in our shed. That squirrel has been busy during the summer!

 
We have also planned something for the future because, as we painfully know but don't want to think about it yet, we have to leave USA next spring. The next logical step would be Canada and specially Yukon area since it's right there, on the other side of the boundary. Julien sent his application for a working holiday visa in Canada but French are so enthusiastic about this visa that the 6700 available visas were done in about 50 hours. Julien sent his letter on Wednesday, few hours after the application opening, but unfortunately the visas were all gone before his letter could reach the embassy. Fortunately we can still go there as tourists and look for jobs and travel around, so we have something really exciting waiting for us also after amazing Alaska time.

On Sunday we visited Todd, a coworker who asked us to housesit their place for next week. His house is up on the Murphy Dome road, that you know probably if you follow dog mushing since it's the area of Lance Mackey and many other great mushers. So we will  be there starting next Friday for 10 days. We really like housesitting, it's like going feel like being on a holiday, and the place is so nice that we are sure to enjoy!

View from Old Myrphy Dome Road

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!