Alaska, North America

Winter Caretaking in Alaska

Every day we go outside walk on the beach and say, “This place is beautiful.” Even when the weather is bad, it’s beautiful. There are about 17 buildings on the property and we have been exploring most of them to see what is what. A few are private residences and we try to stay out of those. This property was built in 1900 as a salmon fish cannery. There was a small village here, including a post office, until a fire destroyed the main canning building in 1978.

Walking on the beach

A few years after the fire, the cannery was purchased by two families who use it as a retreat for their families. They have rehabed buildings, piers and walkways over the years. We live in the Caretakers Cottage. It’s a cute little place with plenty of room for us, a few interesting original quirks and an old oil stove for heat and cooking.

Old time oil stove

Black Tail Doe

While we are here, we will be fishing, hunting, working on the property and relaxing. We’ve already caught quite a few shrimp and a few fish. We’ve seen some wildlife as well. Bears, black tail deer, river otters, so many birds, jelly fish, weird looking starfish, seals and mink. Redd, our dog, loves looking for the mink, but thankfully has been unable to catch one thus far. Hopefully that stays true. We do leave him on a chain because we don’t want him to run off and get lost.

Emptying the shrimp pot. Look at that smile!

A tiny crab from the shrimp pot. I released it.

So many shrimp!

We are located in a rain forest, which was weird to me when I read about it, so it rains a lot. We also can get some pretty high winds. We’ve been making sure things are picked up that could fly away because the weather on our phones is not always accurate. We don’t want things to get lost or damaged.

Grizzly Bear sow and her two cubs

Somewhere over the rainbow. We found it!

Thus far, this has been a really great decision for us to come here. We are much more relaxed and less stressed than we have been in a lot of years. We’ve talked about it a lot and think that less technology, people and stuff is not a bad thing.

River otters. They come some days and some days they don’t. They sure are cute.

Redd inspecting the catch.

When we vacationed Caye Caulker, Belize in 2013, there were signs on their roads that said, “Go Slow”. The signs weren’t for cars because there weren’t any on that island. They were for the people. At the time I thought it was cute. Now, all these years later, I get it. Funny how something from 13 years ago can pop up and give you an ah-ha moment years later. So, in a nutshell, still at the beginning of this experience, I highly recommend it. Maybe not exactly this, but something where you can slow down a little and enjoy the little things.