My First Winter in Alaska (1998/1999)

July 31, 2014

It’s hard to think about winter right now, when we are finally getting some nice sunny, warm weather here at the cabin.  If I am to tell my stories in chronological order, that is my next task…but let me digress a little…

[Our cabin, from the airstrip.]

[Our back deck - You can't tell, but the inlet is just beyond those trees - and that's our Alvin.]

Cam, a friend and neighboring cabin owner, called yesterday to let us know he’s coming out this weekend.  He wants to see if we need anything so he can stop on the way and pick it up for us, but he also wants to know how the berries are doing because his wife, Denise, loves to come out to pick berries.  Otherwise, she is content to stay home (in Anchorage) and do other things.  I went out to check on the berries, so I could let him know.  The cranberries are there, but it will be a while before they are ready to pick.  The swamp at the north end of our airstrip is still so wet that I can’t even get close to the blueberry patches yet.  I can only hope that it dries out in the next month, and that the berries are there this year.  We’ve had so little sunshine this year, I’m afraid it may affect the blue- berries...  

[Early cranberries.]

[My Ready Tuffs in the bog..]

[The swamp is just too wet to check on berries.]

[Just 15' off north end of airstrip.]

Anyway, the dogs and I got our little walk in, and I just decided to enjoy the rest of the day.  I took a few other pictures that I will share with you later...  I gave Cam our shopping list and let him know that Denise may not want to come this weekend…

Anyway, back to my first winter in Alaska….

 

First, I have to tell you that when I interviewed for that job, I found out that Alaskans speak a very different language than Californians…  My prospective boss was telling me how great it would be to work for him (which was true for the most part), and advised me that the hours were flexible, etc.  This was just what I was looking for…especially after working in family law in litigation in California and being totally stressed all the time.  I felt that doing estate planning would be non-stressful, in comparison, and after having my own practice for the last couple of years, I was used to flexible hours and was happy to hear that I would be able to continue working that way.  However, once I started working – on the very first day I had to decide whether I wanted to work 8 to 5, or 9 to 6!  That’s what he meant by flexible.  I was going backwards, and had to get used to the idea of working 40+ hours a week again.  I had not had to do that for almost 15 years!  Even as a paralegal, I usually only worked 35 to 37.5 hours a week.  Boy was I spoiled!

This job is what set me on my new career path in estate planning, though, and I am forever grateful to Dave Shaftel for all the experience and knowledge I gained while working for him.

I think I mentioned in my last post that I had rolled my Bronco.  Totaled it out, in fact!  I still remember hanging upside down by my seatbelt, with all my stuff (it was during the move) sprawled out all around me…  So, I was without a car again, only this time I had no money to get another one!  I bought this old blue Chrysler – front wheel drive, which is supposed to be better in snow and ice, for $300. Had a good heater…life was good.  In the meantime, we had also moved into an apartment that was owned by the true landlord from hell.  We actually wound up moving out after the first couple of months, and found a house that was perfect for us.  It had actually been converted into 2 units, so Gina and I could have our own spaces… 

Now the days are getting much shorter, and it was cold – oh, so cold….  But I was still wearing my little “skirt suits”… remember them?  I had worn skirt suits and high heels for so long that I didn’t think a thing of it!  Besides, my car had a good heater, the house was heated, and the office was heated…  I was doing fine.  Then the cold snap came…  I was at work, and the temperature was heading down below zero…  By the time I got off work and went down to the parking lot, it was 25 to 30 below and my car would not start!  And it was not getting any warmer!  (Didn’t get any warmer for 3 weeks, as a matter of fact.)  I had lots of people try to help me jump start it, including the tow truck person that I called, but no one could get it started.  That’s when I had to take the bus for the first time in years.  I had to walk down to the central bus station (a few blocks away) to catch the bus.  It was really cold, and my legs were absolutely freezing!  I managed to figure out what bus to take and got on, headed to my warm home.  There was ice on the inside of the bus windows!  Since we had just moved into this house, I was not that familiar with the neighborhood.  Besides, it was already dark…  By the time I realized that we had just passed my house and pulled the cord to alert the bus driver, we were already a block or more down the street before he stopped.  I got out and headed toward the house and it was so cold that I actually thought I would freeze to death before I got there.  I actually had images of my frozen body out in the snow….found the next day when the sun came up….  I contemplated going up to knock on someone’s door to explain my dire situation, but decided to tough it out and got the rest of the way to my house.  The next day I went to the Thrift Store and bought a warmer coat and every pair of warm looking pants I could find.  I did not even care that they may be too short for me – as long as they would keep my legs warm and get me through this winter!  It was quite a rude awakening.  My car still did not start – it just sat in the parking lot for the whole 3 weeks of that cold snap, which I was told was the worse one they had in over 10 years.  That’s when I found out why people have plug-ins for their cars – to keep the engine warm so it will start on just such occasions.  At least I had some warm pants for that darn walk to and from the bus…

That first winter was when I also found out that if you pick a Christmas tree and tie it to the top of your car to bring it home, it will freeze and then all the sap will drip all over the floor once you get it inside and set up… 

…and that the mailman will not deliver your mail unless you have shoveled enough snow away from the mailbox that he can drive up to it and drop the mail in the box…without having to get out of his vehicle.  And the city snow plows will make your job of keeping it clear even more difficult when they plow your street.  We had a running battle with the mailman over this and took it personally, until we found out that was just the way things were here…  Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow...just did not apply.

…and that in Anchorage it was not dark 24 hours a day in the winter – the sun actually did come up for about 5 hours a day (give or take a little)…. Alaska is so big - that is only true in the northern part of the State. 

…that people in Alaska did not live in igloos (although some may live without indoor plumbing...), but lived in nice houses and/or apartments, and there were actually high-rise buildings in Anchorage that people worked in…although I did know that already, since I had visited here before.

…that moose and bear were not just limited to the ourskirts of town – they actually lived in town with

the rest of us…

…that just because you have 4-wheel drive doesn’t mean you can drive as fast as you want to on snow and ice (the bus driver told me this during a vent)…

...that you always need to make sure you have lots of warm clothes, and maybe even some food, packed in your car in order to survive in case you break down somewhere...

…that rear wheel drive vehicles are useless in Alaska in the winter…

…that there are things called studded tires that are supposed to help you get a grip on icy roads… (I’m sure that a lot of you in the northern states knew this already but I had not lived in the north since I was a kid…prior to being old enough to drive...so I had never heard of such a thing.)

…that oil heating, baseboard heating, and split entry houses are common in Alaska, and that you do not want to live without a garage to park your car in the winter…

…that the hoarfrost sticking to chain link fences is absolutely gorgeous and sparkly when it’s really cold…in fact, it makes everything gorgeous and sparkly…

…that there are “two seasons in Alaska – winter and construction”…

…that “the odds are good – but the goods are odd” (a very well known saying regarding Alaska men)…

Slowly, but surely, I began acquire some furniture to make the house more like home, more warm clothing to stay as comfortable as possible in such extreme weather, and I began to adjust to this brand new world.  I had the upcoming summer to think about and anticipate… and even though I was lonely and missing my friends, I did have my daughter and grandson close to me and I was hoping that lots of friends and family would come visit me in this wondrously beautiful place.

Next time I will tell you about my next summer in Alaska, and how I met my husband, which is always a fun story to tell...

My First Summer In Alaska (1998)

July 29, 2014 

We are spending our third summer of retirement at our cabin, which is located right across the inlet from Anchorage.  As I add to my stories I will also give you some tidbits about where I am and what is currently going on in my life.  I am going to look at this as if I were writing letters, but without getting the “writer’s cramp” I always used to get when I tried to write letters the old fashioned way.  If I can figure it out, I will also try to insert some photos.  Since I’m new at this, it may take me awhile to get the hang of all this.

One of my main complaints about this summer is that it has been more cloudy and wet than usual.  I like my warm sunshine, and have not had enough of it this year.  To add to my complaint, I have not yet seen any bears here at the cabin this year.  However, I have seen other wildlife that I’ve not seen here before.  We have a resident moose that likes to travel through our yard and across the airstrip, snacking on all the greenery along the way.  We’ve now seen her quite a few times, where we only saw evidence of moose here before. 

We’ve also had a couple of huge cranes out in our airstrip honking up a storm, apparently because their baby had wandered off too far.  It was so young it wasn’t even able to fly yet (also too small to show up in any pictures…), so they were trying to scare us away from the baby and herd the baby back to wherever they were nesting.  They were flying over us and flapping their wings and having a fit!  It was quite a site.  We finally left for fear they would actually attack us, even though we enjoyed watching them and the baby.  The parents were flapping around so much we couldn’t get both of them in the picture very well.  

We saw a baby coyote out on the airstrip a couple of days ago, but did not get a picture.  Later, I heard them all howling quite a bit though.  I don’t think it was a wolf because Jim said it was too small…  Although I do think I saw a wolf out here a long time ago.  Still, no bears yet this year.

Anyway, back to catching up on what I did, once I moved to Alaska.  My last blog explained what made me decide to move to Alaska, and described out trip.  I do have photos of the trip, but will have to eventually scan them into my blogs because that was before smart phones and digital cameras.  I only have actual photos.  I do have a hand held scanner and have had good intentions of scanning all my photos into my computer and organizing them…lol… That’s been on my To-Do list for years now…  I still have to figure out how to use the scanner…

Once we made it to Ninilchik, we took a quick look at our cash and realized that we were going to have to do some kind of work for the summer.  No one could believe we made it all the way in that motorhome, pulling that mile-high trailer behind us.  I gave Pam the disk that was left from that flat tire we had in the middle of Canada, and she was going to paint something on it for me, but we never got around to actually doing that.  Pam is really a good artist.  We spent a lot more money than we anticipated on the trip, and we still needed to buy cars (we sold our cars before we left California), and we still needed to have enough to get an apartment when we moved to Anchorage in the fall.  I planned on selling the motorhome, but that was not going to be enough.  We started looking for jobs and old cheap clunkers. 

For those of you that are not familiar with Alaska, Ninilchik is a tiny village down on the Kenai Peninsula, situated between Kenai and Homer.  It has a population of about 200 or 300 people that are permanent residents, and it increases tenfold over the summer due to tourism and fishing.  However, unless you work in the tourist or fishing business, there are no real jobs there….  They put fishing boats into the water with tractors, and you can catch some huge halibut or salmon down there.  It’s wonderful, but you may have a hard time finding a real job.  Gina got a job as a bartender at the Inlet View, and I got a job in an RV Park in Soldotna, and we were back in the business of trying to save our money again.  

Our friend, Pam, and her husband, Pete, had a boat and Pete was/is a fishing fanatic.  We got to go fishing a few times that summer.  My biggest fish was about a 70 lb. halibut.  Boy, was I proud!  Still am – because I haven’t caught one bigger than that yet.  But I caught the fishing fever myself after that!   

It was a great summer, but by that fall I was ready to head to town (Anchorage) and find a real job.

Gina managed to buy an old Saab, in which I managed to hit my first (and only, thank goodness) moose with!  I hadn’t even been in Alaska for a summer, and hit a moose!  I was actually driving to work from Ninilchik to Soldotna.  As I was driving down the road I saw a horse running down the road.  I was wondering what in the world a horse was doing running down the middle of the road.  I had just passed a place that actually did have a few horses that they rented out for rides, so I just naturally thought it was a horse that had gotten out of its pen.  I hit the brakes and swerved a little to try to miss it, but the tail end of my car fishtailed a little and knocked the hooves right out from under that poor horse!  I saw that it had fallen down on the road (from my rear view mirror), so I pulled over as quickly as I could and jumped out of the car – still thinking that I had hit a horse.  But by the time I got out of the car I saw that it got back up and was taking off running.  By then I wasn’t sure what it was!  It looked kind of like a horse, but it also looked a little weird.  I didn’t think it could be a moose because I didn’t think moose could run as fast as that thing was running.  All the moose I had ever seen were just standing by the side of the road or out in the field, and they certainly weren’t running!  When I got home from work that evening and told everyone what had happened they laughed at me and told me that it was surely a moose, and that moose could run really fast when they wanted to!  

I finally found an old Bronco 4-wheel drive that I thought would be a good vehicle for my first winter in Alaska, so I sold the motorhome and bought it right before we moved to Anchorage.  By then the Saab seemed to be blowing oil everywhere, and the Bronco had a real bad knock in the engine, so we were both a little worried about our transportation, but we figured that if we were lucky we would get through until we could get enough money together to get something better.  The main thing we were worried about at that time was just finding jobs and finding a place to live.  It took me 3 weeks to find a job, so I was really getting worried.  A “headhunter” told me that I shouldn’t have my age on my resume because that may be why I wasn’t getting hired.  That was the first time it ever occurred to me that my age might be considered a negative, just when I finally had lots of experience!  Lol…  

I did get a job with a small “boutique” law firm in Anchorage that specialized in estate planning for high dollar clients.  My boss’s client list looked like the “Who’s Who” of Alaska.  I thought it would be good to get into something other than litigation.  I had been feeling pretty burned out in California, and thought that estate planning would be a lot less stressful, even though I initially thought it would be boring.  In reality, I actually enjoyed it and did not find it to be boring at all.  I know – call me crazy…  The eyes of most people I know glaze over whenever I talk about it, but I thought it was great stuff!  

Anyway, jobs were procured, an apartment was found, and with just a few bumps along the way (including me rolling the Bronco and being without a car again), we were settling in to spend our first winter in Alaska.  Of course, it would be one of the coldest winters that Anchorage had seen for a decade… but that’s another story…

"Mild" Winters in Alaska are relative - Our Moving Experience

Many of my friends (especially those in California) have wondered what I've been doing with my life since I left Santa Barbara.  I decided that instead of having to tell everyone the same story over and over again, I would just start writing a blog and share it with my friends and family.  I am new at this, so please forgive me if I do some crazy stuff on here...

I guess I should start out by telling everyone how I got to Alaska in the first place.  Most people in Alaska are from somewhere else, but when I tell people that I am from Santa Barbara, they are all quite surprised that I would leave Santa Barbara and move to such a cold place...  Sometimes I wonder about that myself, even though I also consider Alaska a slice of heaven.

Before I decided to move to Alaska, I was a single woman with a solo law practice located in a little room upstairs at the University Club in Santa Barbara, California.  My daughter, Gina, and my grandson, Tristan, were then living in Anchorage, Alaska - without me.  I missed them so much - it drove me crazy to have them so far away.  I had my little routine with my friends, many of whom were my dancing friends.  I went to work every day, spending a little time in the office trying to make (and collect) enough in fees to earn a living.  I went dancing several times a week, which was my biggest passion.  I also went camping occasionally with one of my good friends, Meggi.  Meggi was not a dancer - not a country & western dancer, anyway.  Meggi was my camping/hiking buddy.

Meggi and I had decided a long time ago that we would not wait around any longer for men to come around that liked to camp.  We had our own equipment, so we just went on little camping trips ourselves.  It seemed that most of the men in California were not into that kind of thing.  We went to Big Sur, Havasupai, the Sequoias, etc.

Meggi was also single - and she had 4 grown daughters. One of her daughters lived in Kodiak, so she had been to Alaska before.  One of my best friends (Pam) from my Napa, California, days in the mid-70's was also living in Alaska, and I had gone to Ninilchik to visit her when I helped Gina move up there the prior year.

In 1997 Gina got a job driving a truck for UPS in Anchorage.  Of course, just her luck, shortly after she landed the job, UPS went on strike, and she was still not quite on her feet financially from making such a big move.  She had rent to pay, and daycare expenses, etc.  They told her she was going to have to walk the picket line with everyone else, but she could not afford to pay daycare in order to do that - when no money was coming in.  As a result, she felt the best thing to do at the time was to move back to Santa Barbara and Mom for awhile.

Needless to say, I was thrilled.  However, she burst my bubble as soon as she got there, telling me no to "get my hopes up" because she was going to move back just as soon as she could save up enough money again.  This time I begged her not to move back up without me.  I really had nothing to keep me in Santa Barbara.  I was looking for a change.  Alaska - here we come!

I bought a little 22' Toyota Dolphin dual wheeled motorhome, which we promptly moved into over Thanksgiving of 1997.  A good friend (Bob) let us park in his driveway and plug in.  I started getting rid of everything I couldn't take with me.  Gina started delivering pizzas a night while I watched Tristan.  Then I went to work on closing my practice.  We started trying to save everything we could for the trip.  I bought one of those small bi-fold trailers to pull behind the motorhome, and Bob built some wood sides on it for me.  You can only imagine what it was like for 2 adults and a 2-year old to living in that little motorhome for 6 months!  But we were pretty happy and looking forward to being able to hit the road in the Spring of 1998.

Well, we heard that Alaska had experienced a "mild" winter, so we decided that by April we should be able to head north.  We packed that little trailer as high as we could, and another friend (who owned a moving company) shrink wrapped it for us.  At the time, we had no idea about maximum weights for pulling trailers, or maximum load weights for trailers.  We just thought that if it fit - it could go!  We even bought bicycles that we would store inside while we were driving down the road, planning on biking while we were on our trip.  We wanted to take our time and enjoy the Alaska Highway. We had seen it in the Fall, and were looking forward to seeing it in the Spring - when everything would be nice and green.   We were hoping to take several weeks to travel to Ninilchik, and then hoped to spend the Summer visiting Pam before heading up to Anchorage to find real jobs...

Finally, the day came for us to take off - April 2nd, 1998.  We wrote "Alaska or Bust" on our motorhome and hit the road.  I have since learned that many of my friends had a bet going as to how long I would last in Alaska.  None of them thought I would last a year.   Meggi and Bob were the only ones that thought I would make it.

We didn't get too far before one of the wheels came off the trailer - on Hwy. 101 somewhere around San Jose...  Luckily, we did not have an accident - but that meant using our only spare tire before we even got out of California!  Unfortunately, Bob had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts on the wheels, and we did not think of checking.  Good thing we were lucky girls, huh?

We were having a great time.  We stopped at "the Enchanted Forest" near Salem, Oregon, and took Tristan to see all the fairy tale characters.  We stopped at parks to camp, and fed the deer, and road our bikes.  So far our trip was everything we had hoped.  On our first trip (when Gina moved up there), Gina was very nervous and tense because she was making such a big change, and did not know what to expect.  This time she was more relaxed, and so was I.  We had tapes full of nursery rhyme songs and we sang them with Tristan for miles and miles.  Songs I had forgotten even existed - but it was so much fun. Tristan actually turned 3 while we were on the road (April 13th). 

However - about the time we actually hit the Alaska Highway - that's when we found out that "mild" is relative...  When we were thinking of a mild winter, we were thinking with our Santa Barbara minds.  In Alaska and Canada, a mild winter is still a very cold winter.  This meant that in April the ground was still frozen, which meant that none of the campgrounds or RV parks were open yet.  It also meant that it was still cold at night.  And it meant that it could (and did) still snow.  There was still snow on the ground - and nothing - and I do mean nothing! - was green.

The only heat we had was a small electric heater - which was fine for the winter in Santa Barbara, but was no help when you did not have a place to plug in.  We met some wonderful people throughout Canada that let us plug into their outlets at stores or houses.  We also wound up staying at hotels or B&B's a lot.  Our trip was not taking as long as we originally planned because we could not camp.  We got snowed on a few times.  I was totally freaked out on occasion because I did not remember how to drive in snow - especially not in a motorhome with no snow tires!  We pulled over beside the road once and then got stuck and had to wait.  Someone finally came and pulled us out onto the road, after it had been plowed.  All making for an exciting trip, right?

One time, we had another flat tire and we had driven for who knows how long on it - a passing car flagged us over to tell us...  They took us to the nearest town to get another new tire and wheel - because that time the wheel had been grinded down to where it looked like one of those saw blades that you paint pretty scenes on...

Another time, we stopped to get gas in a remote place in the middle of Nowhere, Canada, when the proprietor noticed that the tongue that was holding the trailer onto our motorhome was coming apart.  He pointed it out to us and we proceeded to panic!  He took pity on us and went into his old out-building and found a generator/welder which, thankfully, he managed to get started...  He welded it back on for us and sent us on our merry way.  Such great people in Canada.

We stopped at Liard Hot Springs and took a dip in the water.  We all really enjoyed that.  We had it all to ourselves - again, I've come to realize this is probably because it was still winter there...
We saw very little wildlife - the bears had apparently not come out of hibernation yet.  We did see an occasional moose or buffalo...

There were times when we had to pull over because they were still blasting rocks ahead - building more of the road.  That was interesting.  Now the whole road is paved, but I think we were some of the last travelers to see the road before it was completely paved.  They are still constantly working on it, but it is all paved now...

Finally - we made it to the border of Alaska!  How exciting!  We headed past Tok, toward Palmer and Anchorage (on the Glen Highway), when we hit the frost heaves.  We were laughing our butts off!  You haven't had a wild ride until you ride on miles and miles of frost heaves!  The road was like a roller coaster! 

By the time we were getting close to Palmer, we got flagged over again.  This time we were apparently losing our hose for dumping our black water tank.  We looked back, and it looked like a giant slinky had been crawling along the Glen Highway!  Another good laugh, and we were on our way again.

By this time, we were only a couple of hours from Anchorage.  We stopped there to get a new hose, then headed on down the Kenai Peninsula to Pam's house in Ninilchik.  What was supposed to take us more than a month only took us about 2-1/2 weeks, but cost a lot more than we realized, as well.  But we made it! and we were ready to start our summertime fun with good friends in Alaska before heading to Anchorage and real jobs...