Off Grid Alaska

[mooseoutfront 3643]

After posting some in the non-Texas Winter weather thread, I had some requests to start my own thread about my life in Alaska.

 

The backstory...My wife and I have lived completely off the grid in the Central Interior region of Alaska for going on 12 years now.  It's the lifestyle we prefer, it's not out of necessity.  We live in a 400 square foot one room log cabin in the woods, no electricity or indoor plumbing.  We provide for ourselves as much as we can off the land by hunting, fishing, and gardening.  We moved from Texas to chase my Grandfather's dream of living here.  It was the best decision we ever made.

 

I'm happy to answer questions.

[BabaYaga 15286]

Pretty sweet.  Living the dream.  Good for you!

[DaggerHorns 3082]

“Completely off the grid”

….while posting on a Central Texas based message board.

What a bunch of mooseshit….

[mooseoutfront 3643]

The midnight sun.  Pic taken at 12:03 am on the Summer Solstice

[mooseoutfront 3643]

We call this one meat coma

[mooseoutfront 3643]

Biggest bear I've ever seen.  The pic doesn't do him justice.

[mooseoutfront 3643]

It gets fucking cold.

[El Tri 412]

awesome pics! questions for you.

1. what do you do for a living? are you retired?

2. what does your normal day look like?

3. how far is the closest store for you to be able to buy stuff?

[mooseoutfront 3643]

Aspens in the Fall

[mooseoutfront 3643]

Denali in the distance.  The mountain is about 100 miles away in the pic.

[Bevo 13558]

What do you have the thermostat set at? How many USB plugs do you have in that place? And how many bidets have you installed?

Edited February 1, 2022 by Bevo

[Post Oak 20204]

Do you have a garden?

When you moved there what was harder to do/deal with than you thought?

What was easier?

[DaggerHorns 3082]

Pretty cool that you’re doing something the whole state of Texas did last year for about 3 days.

Also, do you charge your phone/computer with snow? I’m still confused about the “off the grid” part….

[Brisketexan 105041]

When you fart, it stinks up, like, the WHOLE cabin, right?

[Pato del Muerto 52484]

3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When you fart, it stinks up, like, the WHOLE cabin, right?

It’s too cold in there for it to disseminate. It’s just a class V roaming vapor that may or may not be visible without FLIR. 

[mooseoutfront 3643]

9 minutes ago, El Tri said:

awesome pics! questions for you.

1. what do you do for a living? are you retired?

2. what does your normal day look like?

3. how far is the closest store for you to be able to buy stuff?

1.  I'm a chemist.  Like many others in this state, I work in the energy industry.

2. It's winter, so all I basically have to do is go to my job.  My wife is the "Cabin Bitch."  A nickname she loves.  She basically takes care of all the household chores right now.  She literally keep the home fires burning.  The summer and fall are my big contributing seasons.

3. It used to be an 80ish mile drive to Fairbanks.  They built a store about 30 miles away from us around 4 years ago.  It's been a game changer.

[BabaYaga 15286]

Guessing you hunt as well to supplement for meat.  Any issues with bears/wolves claiming or raiding your stores of food?

[4doorsMoreWhores 107]

How do you charge your phone?

[XYZ 2154]

Isn’t it fucking miserable to have to go outside to take a shit in the middle of the night with -60 °F?

Do you ever have to go outside to take a shit and there’s a grizzly outside?

Aren’t the winters really, really long and dark?

Edited February 1, 2022 by XYZ

[Bevo 13558]

1 minute ago, mooseoutfront said:

2. My wife is the "Cabin Bitch."  A nickname she loves. 

She better put out because:
a) masterbating in the outhouse could cause frostbite

b) driving 30 miles to a store that only has moose porn in its redbox seems a little extreme

c) what else is there to do

[mooseoutfront 3643]

10 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

Do you have a garden?

When you moved there what was harder to do/deal with than you thought?

What was easier?

My wife grows the veggies.  She does a fantastic job.  She keeps us in potatoes all winter long.  We home can or freeze the veggies that have a limited shelf life.  I take care of the "secret garden." But since they legalized weed, It doesn't have to be secret anymore.

The hardest thing to deal with is all the water in the Spring after thaw and break up.  Alaska is basically a cold weather swamp.

The cold.  You acclimate pretty quickly.

[SimonBolivar 10957]

1 minute ago, mooseoutfront said:

  Alaska is basically a cold weather swamp.

 

Aren't the bugs terrible in the spring/summer?

[XYZ 2154]

2 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

My wife grows the veggies.  She does a fantastic job.  She keeps us in potatoes all winter long.  We home can or freeze the veggies that have a limited shelf life.  I take care of the "secret garden." But since they legalized weed, It doesn't have to be secret anymore.

The hardest thing to deal with is all the water in the Spring after thaw and break up.  Alaska is basically a cold weather swamp.

The cold.  You acclimate pretty quickly.

You are able to grow weed in Alaska??? Doesn’t weed require temperate weather? (asking for a friend)

[Pato del Muerto 52484]

3 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Aren't the bugs terrible in the spring/summer?

Most bugs can’t handle the cold of winter to successfully procreate. 

[SimonBolivar 10957]

1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Most bugs can’t handle the cold of winter to successfully procreate. 

I always thought that large portions of Siberia and Alaska were mosquito shitholes in the summer.

[AUS-97HORN 11756]

how exactly does it sound when you drop off a brown snake at the outhouse and it splats on the frozen shit water at the bottom?

[Brothahorn 10087]

Do you have your own History/Discovery channel show?

Props to you. I don't think I could voluntarily get that far off the grid.

[Brisketexan 105041]

10 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Aren't the bugs terrible in the spring/summer?

My old man worked on the pipeline.  He grew up in S. Texas, spent a lot of time in La.  He said the skeeters in Alaska were some next-level shit.

[davidg 4036]

This lifestyle is pretty fascinating to me down here in Tx and while I don't think I could handle a full winter in AK I would like to experience some of that for a little bit.  As  I posted in the other thread I came across this youtube channel 

 https://www.youtube.com/c/SimpleLivingAlaska/featured

and its a young couple living an off grid lifestyle in Alaska down toward Anchorage.  Their channel is simply videos of them doing everyday life: growing a garden, canning food, raising chickens and bees, hunting and fishing for meat and working around their small homestead.  They use a small solar system with an inverter supplemented with generator for power, wood for heating and propane for cooking.

The contrasts between winter and summer are quite amazing to me.

 

 

[ztejas 43411]

Have you ever mistaken your wife for an adolescent grizzly bear during the winter months when I imagine her pelt is grown out and kept especially bushy for warmth? 

[davidg 4036]

50 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

We call this one meat coma

Yep, we've all been there.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

Do you worship at the feet of a statue of Dick Proenneke?

[Zepol87 9185]

34 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

I always thought that large portions of Siberia and Alaska were mosquito shitholes in the summer.

Anchorage damn sure is 

[jeevsie 3733]

What's your worst "Oh, shit, we have an unexpected emergency?" story?  Lack of food/water/illness during a bad storm, maybe?

[hookemATL 11700]

just wanted to post this gif. Carry on 

[GhostOfTomJoad 9323]

Thanks for sharing your adventure. A couple of questions:

• with no electricity, what do you need to do to keep your vehicles funning? do they have engine block heaters that you power by generators?
• how long do the two of you believe you can realistically maintain this lifestyle before moving into "civilization"? I mean, are you thinking of retiring to a place where you'll have access to the types of amenities and services people need when they get older?

[Helobious 9459]

I don’t think “off the grid” means what you think it does.

[Guest]

What do you do to combat cabin fever?

Even here when it gets below 50, I don't want to go outside. I can't imagine coping with snow, dark, and cold.

[XYZ 2154]

13 minutes ago, Helobious said:

I don’t think “off the grid” means what you think it does.

And you would be one to know.

[Brisketexan 105041]

Seeing the amount of wood y’all need for the winter….Fuuuuuuuuck.

A couple of years ago, we were on a summer hike in western Norway. Walked by a nice cabin over a fjord, and saw this woodshed, that they were still in the act of filling for the winter. That’s a lot of f’n wood. How does it compare to what y’all put aside?

[Blotto 23485]

1 hour ago, XYZ said:

Isn’t it fucking miserable to have to go outside to take a shit in the middle of the night with -60 °F?

Do you ever have to go outside to take a shit and there’s a grizzly outside?

Aren’t the winters really, really long and dark?

Lulz, thats the first thing that came to mind for me also. Seeing that shithouse pic followed by thermometer pic elicited an audible "nope" from me. I can tolerate cold weather better than most, but I'm certain I would not enjoy exposing the ole beanbag in the dead of winter. 

[mooseoutfront 3643]

2 hours ago, DaggerHorns said:

Pretty cool that you’re doing something the whole state of Texas did last year for about 3 days.

Also, do you charge your phone/computer with snow? I’m still confused about the “off the grid” part….

By off the grid I mean for our energy needs.  We don't have electricity or indoor plumbing, but we can stream movies and have internet access at the cabin.  There is a cell tower about 4 miles from us.

 

We have 2 generators.  A Honda 2200 for the small stuff.  A 3500 for power tools and the meat grinder.  We also have 5 battery packs I take to work on a rotation to charge. 

[Brisketexan 105041]

1 minute ago, mooseoutfront said:

By off the grid I mean for our energy needs.  We don't have electricity or indoor plumbing, but we can stream movies and have internet access at the cabin.  There is a cell tower about 4 miles from us.

 

We have 2 generators.  A Honda 2200 for the small stuff.  A 3500 for power tools and the meat grinder.  We also have 5 battery packs I take to work on a rotation to charge. 

Where does your wife charge her, ummm, entertainment devices?

[Chewbacca 7765]

37 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

What do you do to combat cabin fever?

Even here when it gets below 50, I don't want to go outside. I can't imagine coping with snow, dark, and cold.

Going outside in the winter is great.  You just have to dress for it.

[mooseoutfront 3643]

1 hour ago, BabaYaga said:

Guessing you hunt as well to supplement for meat.  Any issues with bears/wolves claiming or raiding your stores of food?

We hunt.  Mainly moose and grouse.  I'm not that big a fan of caribou.  Never had predator problems.  That doesn't mean we don't keep an eye open for them, but they want nothing to do with humans.  We had a black bear come up one time when I was grilling some meat.  Magnum (the dog in the pic above) chased it off before I could grab the shotgun.  We have a resident grizzly bear in the neighborhood, but I've only seen his tracks.  He's a smart fucker.

These are his tracks in my driveway.  I wear a size 14.

[mooseoutfront 3643]

2 hours ago, XYZ said:

Isn’t it fucking miserable to have to go outside to take a shit in the middle of the night with -60 °F?

Do you ever have to go outside to take a shit and there’s a grizzly outside?

Aren’t the winters really, really long and dark?

You get used to it.  Let's just say you don't dilly dally, but it's not as bad as you think.

You say your "Hey bears" where I live.  As long as you don't surprise them, you really don't have to worry about them.

They are.  This has been a particularly tough one.  We've had a metric shit ton of snow to deal with.

[mooseoutfront 3643]

2 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

Aren't the bugs terrible in the spring/summer?

 

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

My old man worked on the pipeline.  He grew up in S. Texas, spent a lot of time in La.  He said the skeeters in Alaska were some next-level shit.

What Brisket said.  I can't even describe how bad they are at times.

[Your Mom 4805]

8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Where does your wife charge her, ummm, entertainment devices?

A wife married to a bonafide Grizzly fucking Adams probably has less need for those devices than the rest of our wives. 

Someone upthread mentioned it, but I’d like to hear some of your scariest stories of times shit was going wrong. 

And thanks for what looks like it has the potential to be the best thread on surly.  Username checks out. 

[mooseoutfront 3643]

1 hour ago, AUS-97HORN said:

how exactly does it sound when you drop off a brown snake at the outhouse and it splats on the frozen shit water at the bottom?

In the summer, the outhouse thaws and it sounds like a cow patty hitting the ground.  In the winter, it builds up into what we call the poop-cicle.  Think of a stalagmite of shit rising up from the bottom.  We have a dedicated stick we use to knock it down when it gets too close to the seat.

[Biff Tannen 45661]

5 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

In the summer, the outhouse thaws and it sounds like a cow patty hitting the ground.  In the winter, it builds up into what we call the poop-cicle.  Think of a stalagmite of shit rising up from the bottom.  We have a dedicated stick we use to knock it down when it gets too close to the seat.

Well that's fucking horrifying.