Let me start off by saying that life in Alaska is busy – especially when you’re preparing for an Alaskan winter… and then there’s the added component of moving into a house after living in a camper for the past two years, and living overseas for ten years before that.

My first few days in Alaska were comprised of dusting furniture and shuttling everything from the RV into our house: all the food, pots, utensils, clothing, bedding – everything. Over the days, as I watched the kitchen and pantry quickly become swamped with stuff from our camper, I somewhat felt like I was pulling out an endless amount of items from a magic hat. How could we have fit so many things into a 32-foot motorhome when our kitchen and pantry were almost completely full? And especially since we were already running out of space after just the second day! Organizing everything helped a lot of course, but for the first week or so, there were piles of boxes and bags of stuff covering every inch of coverable surface area.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many boxes and bags of food I had lugged from the camper and into the house. Oh, and when I say “house,” I mean a big, navy gray steel building which feels more like an industrial warehouse with a portion of it made into a comfortable bunker. Before my family and I had set sail on the ferry for Alaska, we had literally filled our RV with food. We had heard that food in Alaska could be quite expensive, and after an Alaskan on Facebook had asked if anyone else in Alaska feels like “stores in the lower forty-eight are just giving food away for free” (considering the price of food in Alaska), my family decided to buy as much of our staple foods as we could while the pricing was still “acceptable.” Well, in case I didn’t have enough hours logged on for PE, I definitely did after unloading that camper!

Besides unpacking, just a little over a week after arriving in Alaska I got my first opportunity to go swimming in a lake. I found it interesting to think that although I’d gone swimming in many oceans and pools across the world (and even a thermal hot spring inside a cave in Hungary!), not once had I swam in a lake. I was quite excited at the prospect of swimming in a lake in Alaska, but I also realized it could very well be the coldest water I would have ever immersed myself in – possibly even colder than the pool water in a wintertime French Alps resort (which was bone-chilling cold, even if it claimed to be 18°C/64°F. No wonder everyone who came to the pool was actually huddled inside the steam room!).

It was a rather warm summer day in Alaska (proportionate perhaps to a winter day in Florida), and although I had tried to dress warmly, but not too warmly, I couldn’t wait to hop into the water to cool off. As my parents helped our neighbors get their pontoon boat ready for an afternoon on the water, we kids took turns pedaling in the paddle boat and gliding across the lake on a stand-up paddle board. Finally, we all hopped into the boat and cruised around the lake a bit before we dropped anchor and got ready for swimming.

Several months back, my family had put our bag full of swimsuits in a box in a storage unit to clear up some space in the RV as we didn’t think we would need to use our swimsuits again for the year, so we all suited up in shorts and t-shirts instead. We could have searched for that one cardboard box containing our swimsuits, but there wouldn’t have been much of a point considering we have around 1,100 boxes which we had accumulated in our storage holds in Asia, Europe, and here in the US… which is why our family joke is exclaiming “It’s in a box!” whenever there’s something we need which we know is somewhere in our shipment, and now somewhere on site. Although that joke was amusing at first, now I think it has turned into some sort of dark humor as it is now muttered with an exasperated sigh.

Long story short, we had a great day on – and in – the water, even if we didn’t have our formal swimsuits. The lake was colder than the temperature of water I’m typically used to swimming in (but I’m still convinced the pool water in France was colder), and the little kids had to warm up inside the boat every now and then because they started shivering and their lips began turning blue, but it was a fun experience. One thing that was interesting, was that you could be swimming and hit a spot that was quite cold, but then a few feet away there would be an area of water that was pleasantly warm. We found that the lake we were swimming in actually has underground geothermal hot springs, which is why there are many small areas dispersed throughout the lake that are warmer than others – and so the majority of my time in the lake was spent swimming from one warm spot to the next.

A few other fun activities I’ve done while in Alaska include digging potatoes and picking vegetables at the Rebarchek farm, attending a fall festival in Palmer, taking a stroll around Reflections Lake, viewing the aurora overhead at night, getting to know the amazing people at our local church, visiting and learning about the different animals at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, hiking the Bodenburg Butte (it was so windy at the top!), riding our UTV on our dirt track, operating a Bobcat skid-steer, taking a walk in the woods and hunting for wild berries and mushrooms (more on that in a future blog), canoeing on the lake, enjoying campfires by the lake (even if we have to carefully watch our food so that the neighborhood fox doesn’t snatch it), and finally, taking a four-day advanced wilderness first aid course (and now I’m wilderness first aid certified!).

I’ve also helped my dad with a lot of around-the-house work, like watering the grass with a fire hose (why would you water your lawn with a regular garden hose when you could use a fire hose?), painting our well house, mowing the lawn, forest management, chopping fallen trees into shorter lengths, and splitting those logs into firewood (more on that topic in another blog), and now that it has snowed, shoveling snow off of decks. In case you’re wondering, by forest management I mean removing trees from the slope that are about to fall on to the road, and removing those that have already fallen. For the trees that are drooping over the road, my dad uses a chainsaw to cut the trees at their stumps and lets gravity do the rest. Once they’re on the road, he uses the Bobcat to push them off the side of the road and into the surrounding forest. Sometimes if the tree is small enough, we can cut it into smaller lengths and then drag it off the road by hand. I’ll have more on the topic of chopping and splitting wood, and you will all get to learn about the endless wood pile which took what felt like forever to split.

Speaking of shoveling snow, I’ve done quite a bit of it in the past two-and-a-half weeks – something I had never had to do before in my life. We got our first snow on November 5th, and although it’s not even the end of November yet, we’ve already gotten half the amount of snow that some parts of Alaska, on average, get in an entire winter – and that’s saying something since Alaska is known for getting a lot of snow. After just one day of snow, my sisters and I were already able to go sledding (although it was a bit rocky in some areas).

Shoveling snow after a record-breaking snowfall in Alaska is quite a workout – I got so warm from shoveling snow I had to take off my hat and jacket! Before shoveling snow in Alaska, I couldn’t understand it when I saw pictures of Alaskans shoveling snow in their t-shirts – now I can. I can also understand why Alaskans consume more ice cream per capita than any other state in the US – after an hour of shoveling snow, all I wanted was something nice and cold!

So far, I’ve really been enjoying my time in Alaska. I love the breathtaking views of jagged snow-capped mountains, the smell of fresh air, and all the surrounding nature. I love watching the sunrise in the morning as it engulfs all the white birch trees in an orange glow, and the sunset in the afternoon, as it paints all the mountains in a red hue. I don’t mind that the sun rises at almost half past nine in the morning and sets past four o’clock in the afternoon (it was a little hard to get used to the long daylight hours during the summer), since that’s plenty of time for me to have fun outside. I also enjoy watching snowflakes fall from the sky, knowing that I’ll be able to have a great time outside in a snowy winter wonderland.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vivienne