Life in a Yurt in Alaska

Greetings form an Eagle River laundromat, the yurt is still not a hotspot. I did use my computer at the yurt yesterday though. We have a generator up here now, and it was the first time I have ever started a computer by pulling a cord.
We have been very busy here for the last couple of weeks. Progress on the inside of the yurt has gone fairly quickly, although we still do not have electricity or gas and very little water. Nicki is busy with work and adjusting to her new role as doctor. Leo likes playing in the dirt and has a new extreme fascination with bubbles. I work on the yurt and keep Leo entertained. Both are full time jobs. The following are photos depicting our life in Alaska.

Nicki and Georgie enjoying themselves out on top of the garage.

Georgie ignoring the view outside.

My dad, Mark analyzing the view from Hatcher pass.

Our kitchen.

Our bathroom. The orange bucket is for water to flush the toilet with.

Our Shower room. Notice the lack of walls. This had led to a few embarrassing moments.

Oh! And here is a picture of me throwing a 56 pound weight at the Eagle River Highland Games.

This is a ladder my father in law, Scott, and I made to get up into our loft.

Here is the loft where Nicki and I sleep. We hope to put in some kind of railing at some point.

Internal walls

Leo being a big help.

Thanks to Lia

and Jason for coming up and visiting us. They helped install flooring and carpet.


We will be putting on our last layer of paint later today, finishing up the flooring tomorrow, and then hopefully start putting our furniture together. We are still a long way off from being moved in but we are getting there.

Thanks for being patient with me as computer access have been tough for the past few weeks. We may be able to get Internet and voice mail starting next week. Woo hoo.

The Finished Yurt (Outside)

Here it is. Home sweet home for the next few years. We are still working on the utilities and the framing on the inside, but the outside is looking pretty finished.


The yurt has 8 windows (mostly on the other side enjoying the view) and 2 doors set 180 degrees away from each other. The family is moving out of our temporary residence in Anchorage and moving permanently up to the yurt on Friday. There is going to be a little bit of juggling around of personal belongings inside the yurt with the different work crews coming through. And, we are getting really creative with the lack of utilities. Sorry about the scarcity of posts but the Internet access has been spotty. I'll get the final floor plan and inside photos posted when I can.

Yurt Construction

The Yurt finally arrived and we had the chance to put it up. Here are a few photos of the construction.

We were able to put it together in about 2 days. 12 and 16 hour work days, but 2 days the none the less. Now that is finished we just need to put our furniture together, put together the interior walls, and hook up our utilities. Wondering what it looks like? Well you will just have to stay tuned.

Prince George to Anchorage in 4 Days

We finally made it to Anchorage on Thursday Night. Nicki and I were definitely ready to be done driving and start.......stressing about about all the things we need to do now. Can we be on the road again please? Here is what our 2nd through 5th days of driving looked like.

We spent the night at Meziadin Campground, Whitehorse, and Tok.

On the second day of our trip we had the chance to stop by the largest fly rod in the world. It was 60 feet long.


While pretending to fish with it I totally got called out by a grade schooler riding by in a school bus. He was yelling out the window, "Hi Tourist! Hi tourist! Welcome to Canada, it's a great country."
We also went to a place called Ksan by the BC town of Kitwanga. Ksan is a recreated First Nation village with its central focus on Totem Poles. You can see a picture of Georgie here checking out a pole:

Here is a picture of the mountains in the area with a burial structure in the foreground:


That night We camped by Meziadin lake, got demolished by mosquitoes, had pancakes for breakfast, and made friends with an Australian biking the Americas. This guy is going every where and you can check out his website at http://waynemaurer.net/. Unfortunately, his bike was broken and he was stranded at this remote campsite. Here Nicki is teaching Wayne how to play cribbage ad looking for mosquitoes:


We hope you made it out of there Wayne and maybe we will see you in Anchorage!
The next day we set out again and were rewarded with some beautiful mountains. The blurry spots are squished bugs on the windshield.


We saw about 3 bears along this section of road and 300 piles of bear doo doo. Tons of bears on the Cassiar Highway. Here we are visiting a small set of waterfalls.


Meziadin campground to Whitehorse was our longest day, 610 miles. When we got there we so desperately wanted to stay in a hotel and not worry about setting up our tent. What we did not know is that White horse is a bus trip destination for tourists arriving by cruise ships down south in Skagway. No hotel vacancies anywhere. Luckily we found a nice campsite near by. Here is a picture of it at 1:00 in the morning. Yup, it is still light out.


On our way to Tok, Alaska, we stopped at a national park in the Yukon called Kluane. We took this opportunity to do some hiking and were rewarded with views like this one:


The actual Yukon does come in color, it is just a black and white photo. A short while later we finally made it to Alaska and spent our final night at an RV park in Tok.


On our final day of driving we didn't do much stopping because we jut wanted to be done. We did see some pretty awesome glaciers though and a few moose.

We are staying in some temporary housing in Anchora, waiting for things in Eagle River to be habitable. We have been spending our time getting organized and running to the airport to get family members. The yurt and household goods have arrived at the port and we will pick those up on Monday and hopefully be able to put the yurt up starting on Tuesday. Whoosh! Things are definitely starting to roll.

Leaving For Alaska

On Saturday, Nicki made us all proud by graduating from UW Med School. Here she is walking across the stage with her new fancy hood/sash thingy:


You can now call her doctor, but she says ,"Don't expect me to diagnose that rash of yours."
We spent our final night in Seattle with friends who first helped us pack and then invited us over for board games. I can think of no better way to wrap up our Seattle experience.
Sunday morning we were up at 5:00 and greeted with a knock at the door by a good friend who decided she needed to deliver us some rolls she made for us. Lia you're crazy.
Here is the route Nicki and I drove on Sunday:


The whole trip was 560 miles and took us about 13 hours. Nicki is still getting used to kilometers and kiloliters and hasn't quite wrapped her mind around things being printed in French as well as English. A few embarrassing moments to be had. Here is Nicki outside the town of Quesnel feeling a little sheepish. (What's a mouton?)


The drive had a lot of great scenery: big rivers, big mountains, waterfalls, and cute towns. OK, Kevin, Canada is pretty cool. Unfortunately, my camera was packed away for most of it. I'll be better over the next couple of days and take better and more pictures.
We miss our Seattle friends already. This has been the toughest move either one of us has ever made simply due to the fact that we have left so many wonderful people behind. I truly hope we can stay in touch and please, not just Seattle people, come up and visit us.

Packing Up

Nicki and I are all packed up now and our stuff is on a barge somewhere off the coast of British Columbia. Packing was a bit of an involved process using many people, boats, and automobiles. The first thing we had to do was rent a U-haul truck and load our stuff into it. I was a bit nervous driving around a 24 foot truck at first but eventually got the hang of it. Navigating it down the narrow streets around our house was the biggest challenge.

Here is a picture of the loaded truck, the three of us, and our friend Jay from across the street. He was an enormous help in getting things loaded up and his wife Kat took care of Leo while we were working.


Don't worry Leo didn't actually drive the truck, but he had a great time pretending.


After loading our truck, I then had to drive it across town and load more peoples' things into it. Our friends Erik and Jen are headed up to Alaska for the same reason we are, and we decided to share the cost of a shipping container.

The next day we drove down to Northland Shipping where Erik (moving to Alaska), Jason (the climber), Keith (not pictured), and I loaded all the stuff onto the container. The cute orange vests were required dress code at the terminal.


It was quite the tetris problem loading two households worth of goods, including a 16 foot canoe, 2 kayaks, 5 bikes, IKEA stuff, and fragile furniture, onto the 20 foot container.


That container is currently on a barge and heading north. Now that everything is out of our house, our stress level has gone down considerably, and we are focusing on spending time with friends and family before we begin our long drive North.

The Garage

We are very excited to announce that our garage has a roof. Construction seems to be coming along nicely and it will hopefully be ready for the yurt when it arrives in Anchorage.



Here is a view of the deck that the yurt will be placed upon.
The rectangular hole is where the stairs will come up inside the yurt. (I know this doesn't match our posted floor plans, but things were changed again so the stairs actually come up inside the yurt now. This is a good thing. I'll post a final floor plan when everything is actually finished.) A circular deck will be placed on top of this one and that circular deck is where the yurt will be attached.