Moving to Fort Greely in October (Fairbanks, Healy: for sale, apartments, rentals)

[Mira850]

Hi everyone,

We will be stationed in Fort Greely by October this year. I have read old forums about the area. Many people said it’s better to rent off post, but I don’t understand why? Is housing in Fort Greely bad? Should we rent off post?I also tried to look up houses/townhomes/apartments for rent, but there only little listings available. Maybe one or two the rest was home for sale...

Is buying fresh produce expensive there? I think there is one supermarket in Delta Junction.

The next bigger town would be Fairbanks, how is the drive up there? The road in winter? Are they taken care of?

Does is already snows in October? Will tire chains be needed? We drive a sedan but planning on buying a 4 wheeler when we get there, I assume in Fairbanks?

What is fun to do there during winter? Any festivals? Fair? Fun activities for toddlers?

Thank you in advance ☺️

[AlaskaErik]

Originally Posted by Mira850

Hi everyone,

We will be stationed in Fort Greely by October this year. I have read old forums about the area. Many people said it’s better to rent off post, but I don’t understand why? Is housing in Fort Greely bad? Should we rent off post?I also tried to look up houses/townhomes/apartments for rent, but there only little listings available. Maybe one or two the rest was home for sale...

Is buying fresh produce expensive there? I think there is one supermarket in Delta Junction.

The next bigger town would be Fairbanks, how is the drive up there? The road in winter? Are they taken care of?

Does is already snows in October? Will tire chains be needed? We drive a sedan but planning on buying a 4 wheeler when we get there, I assume in Fairbanks?

What is fun to do there during winter? Any festivals? Fair? Fun activities for toddlers?

Thank you in advance ☺️

Sell the sedan and get a 4WD truck. No one uses chains on POVs in Alaska. As for groceries, why not use the commissary on base?

[Northrick]

What AlaskaErik said. Sell your sedan and get a 4WD/AWD vehicle before the move. Put a good set of snow tires on it just before driving up as you may encounter snow in October.

[akpls]

Delta has the IGA supermarket. It is surprisingly well-stocked, but for some things you may find yourself wanting to go to Fairbanks to Costco, etc. There is only the one highway to Fairbanks and it is generally well maintained through the winter. AWD/FWD should get you anywhere you want to go on the highway.....I routinely drove between Delta and Fairbanks for several years with only a front-wheel drive vehicle. Good tires are essential and you will want to have your vehicle winterized before you get too far into winter.

[RayinAK]

Originally Posted by akpls

Delta has the IGA supermarket. It is surprisingly well-stocked, but for some things you may find yourself wanting to go to Fairbanks to Costco, etc. There is only the one highway to Fairbanks and it is generally well maintained through the winter. AWD/FWD should get you anywhere you want to go on the highway.....I routinely drove between Delta and Fairbanks for several years with only a front-wheel drive vehicle. Good tires are essential and you will want to have your vehicle winterized before you get too far into winter.

This thread would have been started in the Fairbanks forum. Anyway, you are correct about a FWD car not being difficult to drive in the interior. Lots of people around Delta Junction drive trucks, SUVs, and FWD vehicles. While I have a couple of trucks, one 4WD and a 4x4, my daily driver winter and summer is a FWD Corolla. However, during the winter months it wears a set of Blizzak tires, and all-season tires the rest of the year.

To the OP: in relation to living on post versus off, the best persons to ask would be your designated sponsors at Fort Greely. Otherwise a person who has lived on post recently.

[Frostnip]

Originally Posted by Mira850

Hi everyone,We will be stationed in Fort Greely by October this year. I have read old forums about the area. Many people said it’s better to rent off post, but I don’t understand why? Is housing in Fort Greely bad? Should we rent off post?I also tried to look up houses/townhomes/apartments for rent, but there only little listings available. Maybe one or two the rest was home for sale...

The housing on Fort Greely is okay but you can get more bang for your buck in town. Like most of rural Alaska, deals tend to be made by word of mouth and who you know, not by online listings, but you could join the local Facebook pages and ask there about rentals - I think one active page is "Delta Greely Online Sales" or similar.

Is buying fresh produce expensive there? I think there is one supermarket in Delta Junction.

The produce at the Delta IGA is surprisingly good, sometimes better than at the big stores in Fairbanks and at about the same price, but don't necessarily count on being able to get whatever you want whenever you want it.

The next bigger town would be Fairbanks, how is the drive up there? The road in winter? Are they taken care of?

The Richardson Highway is driveable year-round. It's well-maintained by Alaska standards but you have to be careful of frost heaves and wildlife.

Does is already snows in October? Will tire chains be needed? We drive a sedan but planning on buying a 4 wheeler when we get there, I assume in Fairbanks?

It can snow in October, yes. No one uses chains unless they live up a big slippery hill or something. Your vehicle will probably be fine unless it's RWD, just get it winterized and put on winter tires. There's at least one good autoshop in Delta that can do it - Ace's - probably some others as well. Might be a little cheaper to have it done in Fairbanks but it doesn't hurt to build local connections for future car troubles.

What is fun to do there during winter? Any festivals? Fair? Fun activities for toddlers?

The public library in Delta has a lot of stuff for kids. Delta has some neat winter events like the Festival of Lights. Fort Greely has movie nights and a bowling alley and whatnot. On a day-to-day basis you'll need to make your own fun, though. Get outside even though it's frigid or you'll go nuts. There's a nice x-country ski trail that goes around town.

Thank you in advance ☺️

..

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by Mira850

Does is already snows in October?

I believe that almost every year will see snowfall in October. Fairbanks can even get some decent snowfall in September. At least, historically speaking. All bets are off the past few years with winters being way warmer than 20th century averages.

[riceme]

The Delta IGA is a great grocery store by Alaska standards. They mysteriously usually have better.... nearly everything than Fairbanks grocery stores. With apologies to my high school English teacher for the double negative, I never don't stop there when I drive through, and I always look forward to it.

[Frostnip]

Originally Posted by riceme

The Delta IGA is a great grocery store by Alaska standards. They mysteriously usually have better.... nearly everything than Fairbanks grocery stores. With apologies to my high school English teacher for the double negative, I never don't stop there when I drive through, and I always look forward to it.

I think the guy who owns it just ships up a ton of whatever is cheap and fresh on the west coast any given week. I like the weird fruits they sometimes randomly have - one day I stopped, intending to get apples, and ended up with a jackfruit and a pound of rambutans. The deli/butcher there is oddly good for rural Alaska, too.

Oh, OP, in summer there is a farmers' market, too.

Also, be careful about what you rent - there are a bunch of huge nice houses for rent unexpectedly cheap in interior Alaska - that's because the winter utilities on a big place are astronomical. If utilities aren't included in your rent, make sure you ask to see oil/electric/gas/pellet/etc. costs from the last full year so you know what you'll actually be paying on top of rent.

[riceme]

Originally Posted by Frostnip

I think the guy who owns it just ships up a ton of whatever is cheap and fresh on the west coast any given week. I like the weird fruits they sometimes randomly have - one day I stopped, intending to get apples, and ended up with a jackfruit and a pound of rambutans. The deli/butcher there is oddly good for rural Alaska, too.

Oh, OP, in summer there is a farmers' market, too.

Also, be careful about what you rent - there are a bunch of huge nice houses for rent unexpectedly cheap in interior Alaska - that's because the winter utilities on a big place are astronomical. If utilities aren't included in your rent, make sure you ask to see oil/electric/gas/pellet/etc. costs from the last full year so you know what you'll actually be paying on top of rent.

If that's what's happening, I think it's an awesome produce strategy for the interior that I wish more places would adopt. I can no longer recall what it was, but I remember stopping on our way home from Chicken a couple summers ago and there was a veritable motherlode of weird (Alaska-weird) produce. I bought one of each and had eaten it all by the time we got to Fairbanks.

And I agree about the deli/butcher situation. I always find some delicious sausage or something like that. I'll be going through there in a couple of weeks and now I'm really looking forward to it. Ha

Topic-adjacent: another great grocery store near Fairbanks is the new Three Bears in Healy. They also seem to have way better everything than us, I'm sure because they cater to the restaurants, which cater to the fancy tourists. I have made special trips to grocery shop there.

OP, I second the above advice about big homes. Less is more in the interior. Definitely research the cost of heating whatever you rent, and don't take the word of the landlord. Call GVEA or look at the previous year's fuel bills.