Alaska Homesteading 2.0

"New" Guest Cabin
Doug and I returned to Haines, AK in early March, arriving just before the Covid lock down. We were happy to be home in our small rural Alaskan town for the beginning of the pandemic. The new stay at home recommendations worked out okay for us as our spring plan was to continue cleaning up our “rough” homestead prior to fishing season.

Last year (those of you who saw the blog will recall) we took possession of the 3+ acres, cleaned up the neglected house and began consolidating and getting rid of the 10 abandoned Ford trucks and numerous other old, rusty “treasures” scattered thru-out the property.
House, tree and bunk house (rt) before the move

This spring we focused on 1 of the 4 inherited out buildings, turning it into our guest cabin/sun room. This was the old “bunk house” and we needed to move it in order to drop the huge spruce tree that was right next to the house. Doug created a skid/pulley system to move the building 40 feet away and then we dropped the tree (which was very exciting being as it was literally 2 feet from the house)!


Inside the refreshed cabin
We then replaced both the roof and the deck on the building creating a lovely outdoor space for us to hang out in both sunshine and rain (because Doug covered the deck with a clear roof for maximum light, even in rain). Marirose helped us stain the new siding, we cleaned and painted the inside, added a new picture window, a bed and voila’ – new bedroom! We plan to add a small wood burning stove, counter top, rugs, etc in the fall but we slept in the space the last week and it felt excellent to have this new, sweet little cabin to use or share with guests!

Tree down next to house
We weren’t able to go to Sitka for Spring King fishing in June due to Covid restrictions, but we are now on our way to outside waters (Gulf of Alaska, Cross Sound area) for the July 1st opener. We hope to recover some of our lost revenue but we know everyone is struggling with the reduced economy and we feel blessed that we had a place to go and a project to work on to get us to this point!

Stay safe everyone – and eat a lot of Wild Alaskan Caught Salmon this year : )

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