Moving to Homer or Seward areas - big family, lots of decisions! (Wasilla: loan, hotels)

[Haolejohn]

Originally Posted by MouseBandit

For those that have traveled the Alcon this year, what is the "average" price per gallon of gas you're seeing, or what is the "typical" amount of funds I should have allocated for gas on the trip? 18mpg (or less, hauling a trailer). It's looking like about 3000 miles and 53 hours drive time.

The conex on a barge thing is sounding really expensive! Rough quote is $12k, haha. I love my mom's furniture, but no, not that much, hahahaha.

I'll check some other quotes, and actually talk to them to see if it's cheaper since we have our own conex.

Contact Alaska logistics or Alaska Marine line. Both barge out of Seattle. They charge by footage. 19' or less
Should cost around $2500

18mpg is a suburban? I call BS. Pulling a trailer you will get even less.
We had an older suburban (1995) and we were lucky to get 15mpg going downhill.

[riceme]

Originally Posted by Haolejohn

Contact Alaska logistics or Alaska Marine line. Both barge out of Seattle. They charge by footage. 19' or less
Should cost around $2500

18mpg is a suburban? I call BS. Pulling a trailer you will get even less.
We had an older suburban (1995) and we were lucky to get 15mpg going downhill.

I've had two old Suburbans, one was an early 80s, one was a late 80s, and I've had a handful of Chevy pickups ranging from 82 to 2008. All of them were gasoline, none of them have gotten double digit gas mileage.

Maybe theirs is a diesel.

However, my cousin has the same Silverado as me (the new one) and he gets between 10-18, but he hardly ever drives his.

I'm not really sure why I've had so many Chevy's... I am really not a big fan. :/

Oh, there was one exception. My brother and I shared a 68 stepside with a straight 6 when we were in high school. That thing got great gas mileage... around 16-18 if memory serves.

[MouseBandit]

I'm double checking with the hubby - maybe I'm full of doodee, haha! I thought it got like 18 on the highway.

Ok, he says 14-17 on the highway, much worse when pulling trailers. And this is old red - my daily driver. Mad Max Suburban, he says 9-12 mpg with no trailer. Both are 350 gas engines, not vortec or anything. Old Red is 1/2 ton, no modifications, Mad Max has 1/2-ton front axle, 5/4-ton rear axle, lift kit, and military humvee tires with run-flats, LOL. And a freaking TON of weight in the back and on the top custom rack for "stuff", haha.

I'll try to add a picture of the black suburban aka Mad Max. :-) He's the one that will be coming up with us.

[riceme]

Oh, my suburbans had the 454 in it... terrible gas mileage but ran like a striped ape, much like my Silverado.

[MouseBandit]

WOW, things moving fast down here! Husband showed up tonight, home early. He has been working out of town for almost a year, only coming home on weekends. He got laid off today, for at least 6 weeks!! This is totally unheard of - he is their most valuable foreman, but there's been issues with this jobsite, and they've made the call to shut the whole site down until the legal issues are resolved. SO - he gets 6 weeks straight to work on finishing up the house here!! PERFECT! And, if we need any extra cash, he had 4 side job offers before he even made it home tonight, haha! I am absolutely certain this is providential so we can get this place wrapped up and ready to go ASAP. He had no idea this was coming when he made the decision to move forward on Alaska! I am deliriously happy, LOL! As if it could any better than us actually moving up, now he his home full time to enjoy the process with me!! YIPPEE!

[riceme]

I found the picture of my friend's trailer hitch... This was taken in Whitehorse. Trailer-hauler beware!

[MouseBandit]

OMGoodness! LOL! I gotta show this to the hubby! It's the frost heaving that causes the road to buckle and be so bad, right? (My copy of Milestone is on it's way, I'm sure it will explain the details.)

[MouseBandit]

Ok, so this is funny! The kids have been hearing hubby and I talk about taking the food storage, because food is so expensive up there. My 3-yr-old understood that to mean there is no food in alaska. The kids each have already packed a little "go-bag" to take with us, and I was catching my 3-yr-old rushing back and forth to her bedroom saying something about Alaska. I finally took a good look, and she had a block of cheese out of the fridge and into her go-bag, then she went and got some hot dog buns. I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was packing food, because there's no food in alaska! LOL! I retrieved the food, and we had a good talk about salmon, halibut, and moose. ;-)

[Frostnip]

I'm in favor of self-sufficiency and applaud your efforts in that direction, but I would point out that all the places you're considering moving are in some of the most "civilized" parts of the state. There are grocery stores and whatnot right there and the prices on staples (pretty much anything that's not big name brand or highly perishable) aren't even much out of line from mainstream US prices. Homer and Seward are also both extremely touristy.

Last time I was in the Lower 48 I caught a few episodes of that Alaska: The Last Frontier show and it cracked me up. All the dramatic narration about how the Kilchers were going to starve to death if they didn't shoot a moose today or whatever, when anyone who knows the area knows they could just take some of their TV money on over to the Safeway. Or, like, do the dollar drive-thru menu at McDonalds.

I guess what I'm saying is it's awesome to be prepared and to do whatever you can to cut costs and live on your own effort in a sustainable way, but you're not moving ANWR, you know?

Not trying to be critical, just want you to have a realistic picture of your destination.

[MouseBandit]

Frostnip - no worries! I do understand that we're not going to be putting ourselves in a situation that's all or nothing. :-) We have 4 little ones ages 8 and under. This will be our first winter anywhere colder then Colorado. We're not in a position to go anywhere too far away from a hospital, or off the road system. I *think* our food storage and meal planning skills are pretty good, but I'm not willing to put myself or my kids in the position of NOT having a supply store within a couple hours drive, just in case I mess up.

I certainly can't speak for how folks do things up there, but down here, self-sufficiency and homesteading are not an all-or-nothing proposition. It's a continuum, and folks who enjoy living independently range all over the continuum. I think that's cool.

I have laughed a lot at the Kilcher TV show, at the narrator. It's pretty cute to have them trying to sound so dramatic with the freezer plugged into a wall outlet, and the electricity meter box in the background. But, just because they *can* go hit up McD or the grocery store or whatever, probably doesn't take away any from their satisfaction at providing as much for themselves as they can. And, being only a generation or two away from the homesteaders who didn't have those supply lines, I bet they've had a lot of family tradition drilled into them that you provide or you starve, whether that's actually literally true or not (sort of like my parents and the starving children in China, LOL). I could do without the silly narrator on that show, but I LOVE watching all the ways that family comes up with providing for their own needs. And I'm impressed as all get-out that all of the original kids were born up there, and survived, LOL! I give that mother a WHOLE lot of credit!

I do have a really clear picture of where we're going - which is why we're looking at the locations we are. I love the idea of living in the bush, fly in supplies once a year, oh yeah. Haha! I am SOOOOO not ready for that! I don't know much, but I know I don't want to end up dead in bus or a cabin or anywhere else because I overestimated my skills and underestimated my lack of skills. For the foreseeable future, I know that I need a safety net. Even if it was just the husband and I, no little kids, we'd STILL want a safety net the first year or even two. And, even if we do decide in the future to move somewhere off the road system, we would STILL be dependent on an annual or bi-annual supply run to the city for a variety of things I know we can't supply ourselves. So, while I want to "live off the land" - for me, that's not meant to be an all or nothing lifestyle. Just because I can't mine salt or make all our own clothes and shoes, doesn't mean I just give up and live in a suburb and shop at costco. ;-) I'll go for it - as far as I can, and keep pushing to learn new skills and push a little further. Maybe someday we will feel prepared enough to go further out, we'll see. For now, Homer honestly looks like a good start point. On the road system, but a decent ways away from anchorage. Has a hospital, just in case. The climate is not as harsh as many points further north, but still cold enough to give us some room to have to adjust. The garden bench outside Homer seems to be very well suited to gardening and limited livestock. The touristy part sucks, but what they're coming for - the salmon and halibut - those are a big factor for us in learning to subsistence fish. It seems pretty reliable that with a decent investment of effort, you'll come out with a decent amount of food (maybe not, I could be wrong). Do I think we're gonna walk out our door and bag a moose and hundreds of pounds of fish our first year? Um, no, LOL! That's why I'm gonna bring food storage with us, and a healthy chunk of money, figuring that I'll be a frequent visitor to Safeway those first few years, LOL.

For us, self-sufficiency isn't so much about cutting costs, although that part's cool, it's about challenging ourselves to do more for ourselves, and to connect with the land, and to live more simply and directly. I absolutely do not have it all figured out, but I am working very diligently to come at this move with a lot of prudent planning, and I am going to give myself the opportunity to figure it out by going there and living it!

MouseBandit