ALASKA: Homesteader Paradise

Hello steemians, We’re Going To the Kenai Peninsula!

So I like to think that when I travel, I’m usually lucky enough to find myself doing what most tourists don’t do or think of doing. Maybe I just look for these off the beaten track adventures, I don’t know.

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This time around I find myself married to someone who has family on the Kenai Peninsula. My wife’s uncle Garry was imported from the lower 48 at a very young age and became a marine biologist, working for the department of Fish and Game.

He spent most of his life amongst the trees, rivers, salmon and bears. Like a lot of Alaskans, he is a passionate fisherman and an avid hunter... The difference is that Garry is a walking encyclopedia, especially when it comes to biology!

So now you can see why my wife, our little homie and I had a bit of a different trip than most tourists...we had our own personal guide!

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I’ve been looking for zoo pictures, but I guess we didn’t take any except for the two wolves!

First stop was the Zoo in Anchorage. I don’t usually like zoos, but this one seemed friendly to the animals, the cages are very close to the (human) path and the whole thing is set up in such a natural setting it felt really good.

*Live mountain goats, that could be *

On the way to Kenai, wild goats high above the road, YEAH! Garry managed to spot them as we were driving so we pulled over and soon after we did (pointing, looking up and taking pictures) more cars jumped into the shoulder to gawk at whatever we were gawking at. It was well worth it and there was more goats than the picture tells. I can only do so much with a cheap LG phone (everything else is kind of fuzzy)!

Proud Alaskan uncle made us take a picture!

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I had never really gone fishing… apart from trout or carp fishing in a lake off of a small rowboat with my grandfather many years ago. I also had no real idea that Alaska was a fishing destination.
There is a whole business here for freezing, storing and sending fish back to the rest of the world. I’m not talking about commercial fishing and all the industry that surrounds it, this is for the little guy who wants to bring all the salmon back home away from Alaska!

We did not catch an entire cooler of reds and silver, but almost!

So one of the great things that come out of the freeze and ship tourist industry, there is plenty of rockfish and it is god damn delicious!

You see, rockfish does not freeze very well (of course it does, but it loses a lot of it's flavor once thawed. I suspect it also doesn't have much of a resale value). But what you do is bring it home the day you catch it, fillet it, cut it up, prepare the lemon juice and whatever else you like to have in your ceviche and Voilà!

Silver... Kind of my first time fishing, I'm very happy!

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So, I could keep going on and on and I should brake this up into several parts. Maybe I will, but for the moment let's talk about Alaska as a Homesteading Paradise.

A good old Alaskan Homesteader's caribou BBQ

• Fishing and hunting is a need, so a lot of people have the skills. It's a good place to learn the ins and outs of processing food. My family fills up a deep freezer (or two) full of fish and game, they smoke salmon and make jerky for that long winter. They personally do a very good jog at having protein left over from the previous year and they share a lot.
• Those who have acreage are given a monetary incentive to build high tunnels (I believe it is $7000 per and you can have up to 5, depending on the acreage) . This was at the time of the trip which was July and August 2016. The Alaskan government wants people to make use of the long summer light to feed themselves.
• There are also un-incorporated areas in Alaska where codes are... well let's just say local gov'ment only cares about an assessment on your house to collect taxes... A thief that leaves you alone mostly

So because of these three reasons, there are a lot of functioning homesteads which we had some first hand experience with. The neighboring homesteaders, off gird recluses, and fishing nuts helped make Alaska a really really tempting place to build a life of self reliance and be one with nature.... I'm just not so sure about the cold long dark winter!

Here are a few more pictures:

Until Next time...Fish ON!!!

Thank you for reading
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