Ok. I am going to drop you in the wilderness of Alaska. Miles away from other people.
You are going to be in a tiny house, off the grid. And I can’t promise that any of the off grid appliances or amenities are working right…
What would you want to pack for this adventure? What could you NOT leave home without?
This is the question I was facing as I tried to fill the family van with as much gear as possible before we set out for Alaska!
Welcome to The Alaska Off-Grid Challenge
Okay, so maybe at this point, you, like most of our family members, are asking, “Why are you guys doing this again?”
Not too long ago, we announced that we’re going to be building an off-grid home for our family, but we wanted to get some experience living off-grid before we built that home.
That’s what the off-grid challenge is all about.
While we’re in Alaska, the land of the off-gridders, we’re also going to take some time to interview experts, people who have been living this way for years. We’re going to learn as much as we can from these off-grid experts.
Back to Packing
I spent like two whole entire days packing for this trip. We were coming to Alaska to live off-grid. That means no public utilities, no electric company, no city water or sewer.
Although the cabin we’re coming to has already been built and has some basic amenities, we didn’t know how much of them were actually going to be working.
We wanted to make sure we brought everything we needed to survive off-grid, and anything else that happened to be working when we got there would just be a plus.
We were coming in a caravan, this vehicle plus my parents’ pickup truck. So I spent two whole days packing this vehicle and my parents’ truck, getting everything just right.
It’s amazing how quickly all that can be unpacked when you forget to close the tailgate of a pickup truck. We stopped for gas, checked
something in the back of the pickup truck, and I won’t mention names… It wasn’t me. Somebody forgot to close the tailgate of the pickup truck!
All our stuff, coolers, luggage was strewn about the Pennsylvania highways. A cooler had fallen out of the back of the pickup truck, some luggage, my dad’s work boots.
A Good Samaritan saw all this stuff falling out of our truck, gathered it up, and actually waited at a Sheetz looking for us to give it back to us. The cooler even still had perfectly good soda in it!
Fortunately, we had this Good Samaritan come along and help us because my uncle’s passport was in his bag, and that would have been a problem for us trying to cross the border into Canada and AK!
Who are “We”
I keep saying we, but I should introduce you to the fellowship… K and the kids did not drive with me to Alaska, they were flying out 10 days later to meet me there.
I wasn’t driving alone though…
There was my Uncle Dennis, Mom and Dad, who you’ve seen on the channel many times before, me and the fifth member of our fellowship, Farm pup.
We’re going to be living here in bear country, and we did not want to leave our farm pup back in Pennsylvania when we knew he’d do such a good job protecting us, keeping our area free of bears.
We had to bring him along.
Five of us were off on a cross-country adventure, and the goal was to get all our stuff, our necessities, from my home in Pennsylvania across the United States, through Canada, and into Alaska.
Let the Road Trip Begin!
The goal was to make as best time as possible driving cross-country to Alaska because Kay and the kids were planning on flying in 10 days after I left Pennsylvania, and I wanted to have a couple of days here at the cabin to get things ready and make sure it’s cozy for them when they arrive.
We tried to make as good time as we possibly could. That said, we did have a couple of stops along the way that we had planned, and one of them we hit right away, the very first night of this drive.
Whats a Road Trip Without Tunes?
Kay wanted to get me, for our 15th wedding anniversary, which is this year, a brand new guitar. We figured, you know what? The world’s largest music store with an entire giant selection of acoustic guitars would be a great place to stop, and so we did.
Sweetwater Sound in Fort Wayne Indiana.
I’ve never seen such a big music store with so much selection. I took two hours playing all different guitars from $500 to $5,000. (Not that I could afford a $5,000 one, I just wanted to play them.)
I narrowed it down to a Martin dreadnought with a sun-kissed finish, looked beautiful!
It was the prettiest sounding guitar in the room, and it was in my budget.
And it was so cool because the salesman actually turned out to be a Homesteady viewer!
Quinn is a big fan of Homesteady; he’s been watching for a long time, he’s planning on starting his own farm.
So if you’re near Fort Wayne, Indiana, check Sweetwater Sound out. They have an amazing store. Ask for Quinn, tell him you’re part of the Homesteady community, and Quinn, I hope you get your farm up and going soon, man. Send me pictures!
Making our Way West
With a brand new guitar in tow, we hit the road again, this time heading west through the vast landscapes of the United States.
We drove past the mighty Mississippi River, which, believe it or not, I had never seen before.
Wildfires and Smoky Detours
As we journeyed westward, we encountered something that’s sadly become all too common—a thick haze of wildfire smoke.
Back in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t really bad for us. In Minnesota, it was pretty thick. We’re actually headed to British Columbia, and so we started looking into the routes and where the wildfires are and where we’re going to be driving. Sure enough… There were some fires along our route… Things might get a little interesting as we head into BC!
Fortunately for us, the smog lifted as we entered South Dakota because we were planning on going to see Mount Rushmore, and it would have been a big bummer if the presidents’ faces were covered in wildfire smoke.
Farm Pup, the Bark Ranger
One of our most memorable stops was at Mount Rushmore.
Farm pup has never been off the farm, and I didn’t know how he was going to do in big crowds at these different places, but I couldn’t leave him in the car.
So we brought him to Mount Rushmore.
Now, while at Mount Rushmore, they were filming something for the national parks, and they had Guy Fieri there.
There were some crowds around him, trying to get pics… but nothing compared to the reaction people had when they saw farm pup!
I had multiple people come up to me and ask to take pictures with him, pet him, or just ask about him.
” I cannot tell you how much he looks like one of my dog’s.”
“Can I take a picture; my wife’s gonna freak out.”
He was so well-behaved that the Park Rangers at Mt Rushmore actually made him a bark ranger!
Let’s just say, of the two of them, Farm pup was the most popular guy with frosted tips on Mount Rushmore.
I’ll be honest; it kind of went to his head.
You may or may not know this, but the only way we’re able to produce our show is thanks to the Homesteady Pioneers.
While we were in Alaska, we were busy recording videos, interviewing experts in the off-grid world, but we could not release these videos onto YouTube because, well, off-grid and no internet.
But you Homesteady Pioneers, you made it possible for us to produce this series.
And so as a way to say thank you, every episode of the Alaska off-grid challenge, we’re going to have a live streaming viewing party.
We’re going to watch it live together. We’ll be there afterward to answer your questions, talk about off-grid life, Alaska homesteading in general, just a great way for us to get together, enjoy this experience learning together, and hopefully help us all get further along in our homestead goals.
It’s gonna be a lot of fun, and I really want you to be able to join us. So we’re going to do a really good sale right now.
If you sign up for a year now, you’ll get four months for free.
Our goal for the Alaska off-grid series is to bring in a hundred new Homesteady Pioneers to our community and actually spend a lot more time working together towards accomplishing our goals.
I look forward to seeing you at the release of the next episode, and of course, you’ll have access to the entire Pioneer Library with all our commercial-free extended versions of our podcasts, videos, classes. You’re gonna love it.
To make it north into Canada, we decided to go through Glacier National Park, which was so beautiful. If you’re ever up in Northern Montana, definitely something worth seeing. One of the prettiest drives I’ve ever seen in my life.
We got back on the main road and just had a beautiful drive through Montana. We pulled over, cooked ourselves some dinner by a riverside, played some music with my brand new guitar.
Up to this point our Journey felt like this amazing, wonderful cross-country road trip, which is what I was hoping. I got to spend this time with my parents and my uncle, and it was really, really special.
But things were about to change… when we crossed into Canada.
A Smoky, Bear-Filled Journey
“Your route may be affected by Eastern British Columbia wildfires.” Siri warned as I punched in the destination of our hotel in Fort Nelson, BC.
We were headed through Brittish Columbia, and the route was taking us through some areas where these fires were raging. Yikes.
As we got closer and closer, you could see the smoke; you could smell it in the air. Then we started driving by fire trucks.
What started as a nice family road trip, now was feeling like a race.
Fortunately, we were far enough away that it never really felt like we were in any kind of danger, but my nerves were at, like, level 10 all day just until we got through that section, got north of the wildfires.
So for anybody who’s being affected by those wildfires, whether it’s the smoke or the fires themselves, I hope we get some good rain soon and put them out. That way, none of us have to worry about it anymore because honestly, that was the most stressful part of the trip!
Even more stressful then the idea of camping by the bears…
Bears, Bears Everywhere
As we were approaching Alaska, we came through a section of the Alcan Highway that is very, very desolate, very remote, full of wildlife, and bears!
Black bears AND grizzly bears.
I was both excited to see the bears, and a little worried. You see, we were having a hard time finding a place to stay.
As we were passing bear after bear, and ‘No Vacancy’ sign after ‘No Vacancy’ sign, I started putting 2 and 2 together…
“We might have to camp on the roadside here, and that’s bear number three in the last two miles. And, it’s feeding time. Hopefully, we’re not on the menu.”
The last place we made it to after driving for 700 plus miles, had a room for us. We got checked into the room, we got a good night’s sleep, and stayed off the Grizzle menu for the night.
The Final Stretch
It was on our Eighth Day, with a mixture of exhaustion and exhilaration, we finally crossed the border into the wilds of Alaska. It was a momentous occasion, one that we celebrated with Farm Pup, our faithful canine companion, by snapping a few pictures.
Just the Begining
As epic as it was, our road trip was merely the preamble to a much grander story. We had arrived in Alaska, standing at the threshold of our off-grid adventure. With just two days before K and the kids would join us at the cabin, there was much to be done.
Want to see episode 2 of the Alaska Off Grid Challenge? CLICK HERE TO BECOME a PIONEER and WATCH EPISODE 2
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