Great housesitting in Murphy Dome

Starting from last weekend we were housesitting at a coworker’s place near Murphy Dome. Area is surrounded by hills and you can see the Alaska Range, and if it’s a clear day, Mount McKinley, from their living room window. 

 The House

  Landscape from the yard and property

And if you walk to the other side of the Old Murphy Dome Road, you can see the White Mountains and even a glance of the Brooks Range. What a place!

We were lucky with the weather, it was sunny every day. On the other hand it means cold weather, -20 °C at the coldest, usually with high winds that makes the air feel so much colder. 

But we still enjoyed our time outside, taking pictures of course, and going for walks, and Piia went for running and skiing a couple of times. You can say we enjoyed the “housesitting holiday” fully!

It seemed some moose had een running in property as well...

The location was also perfect for sunset and northern light pictures with lots of open area around. It seems we live a season of great solar eruptions and we were witnessing some of the greatest Aurora borealis ever! Or what do you think?

 

 

Housesitting chores included feeding six goats (Kong, Attie, Annie, Lupey, Colleen and Colville) twice a day. Sometimes we also let them out since they have a thick coat and they can handle cold weather. Usually they headed straight to the hay pile. Endless appetite! 

We had also pleasure to live with two very beautiful and funny cats, Boo and Ram, who stole our hearts right away. They are very playful and like to chase a fish toy and play with a ball. They were also relaxing on our laps while we took advantage of having TV for a while and purred happily. Usually Raw also slept with us, sometimes as Julien’s pillow, sometimes curling up next to Piia.

  

We had also a great opportunity to enjoy some game meals since Todd and Aleya have lots of canned salmon and moose meat. Boy it was delicious! And it was a perfect week!

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