March Madness

The Matanuska River Valley, with the tip of the Matanuska Glacier visible on the left.

Along with March came many new experiences in Alaska!

We are currently in the midst of the first major global pandemic of our lifetimes, but you wouldn’t know by looking out the window here. We are happy to be where we are during these times. After all, you can’t spell pandemic without PANIC! We have more or less been “social distancing” since last June, so not much has changed in day to day life for us. The only noticeable affects have been the panic buying of store items such as paper towels, toilet paper, and flour. The last of which being the only thing we weren’t able to find for a couple of weeks – what a time to get into bread making!

A couple of days ago Alaska suffered it’s first death due to COVID-19 and the governor has since issued a two week ban on non-essential travel. So things may continue to get more interesting… or they may not. There are still a few people wandering around without any idea of what is happening, and I think they like it that way.

Rez says "if zombies come, I got your six"

Anyways, in other news, our trailer made it here!
Backstory: We had met a retired truck driver up here who regularly hauls things up and down the Al-Can Highway for people and he agreed to pull up a trailer for us. Pete flew down to South Dakota in December and loaded up most of our belongings that we had left there last May, and our driver left here in February to go get it. It sounded like he had quite the adventure and I believed every word of it. Towing a couple tons of cargo over thousands of miles of ice-packed mountain roads is probably not something we would have done ourselves, so we were thrilled when he took us up on the offer!

One of the many items we had packed in the trailer was our cross country skis. The timing couldn’t have been better for them to arrive. In the second half of March, days were regularly getting above 40ºF with lots of sun. Pete took Baby Girl in her carry vest on a ski ride down the road to the lake, then made their own trail through the spruce forest on the way back. The skis work great in the deep snow and they allowed Little Lady to see many new things for the first time. She had a hoot!

Baby Girl laughed and smiled as she cut a trail through the spruce forest with her Dad.

As I mentioned earlier, we recently got into bread making. We have a lot to learn in perfecting the art, but our first attempts have been nothing short of delicious! Pete made a sourdough starter and it has been a very interesting project.

We made a few loaves of bread, baguettes, some flatbreads, and lots of pancakes and crepes before we literally ran out of flour due to the store shelves all being empty. We had to stop making our new favorite food for a couple weeks while we waited for the hoarding to subside. Luckily, the starter survived in the fridge for the two weeks and we recently stumbled upon a bag of flour, so we’re back at it! Although sparingly for the time being.

First loaf of Sourdough Bread!

For the cabin, Pete has built a couple of ship ladders which we have permanently installed and provide an easy path up to the loft. (Pete wrote about making the ladders HERE ) Next, we plan to finally get the flooring put down and the windowsills and trim up, which will make things look much more finished.

Pete got fancy and made plans for the ladder on his computer. See the Ship Ladder blog post to download the plans.

One other thing we did while social distancing was drive up the Glenn Highway to the Matanuska Glacier. It was about an hour and a half drive each way for us, and Baby Girl slept the whole way. In fact, she didn’t even wake up to look at the glacier. Oh well, we’ll be back!

We aren’t allowed on the glacier in the winter, and it would have been a few hours wait for a guided ride up to the base of it, so we admired from afar. The glacier extends some 27 miles into the mountains, making the part we could see just a sliver at the tip. It’s incredible to imagine the large river valley having been completely filled with ice a few hundred years ago. The current glacier just a piece of its former self. Oh, and we spotted 10 moose on our road trip. I love seeing moose!

View of the Chugach Range

The Matanuska Glacier

Well, that’s about it for March. Stay Safe and Healthy, Everyone!
Thanks for reading!