We Broke Ground

 The building has started.

We're building a daylight basement style house. The owner of the GC, Sheldon is holding the leveling pole and directing the digging of the foundation.

The foundation of the basement starts to become recognizable, some of the foundation form boards starting to show up and take form.

Les, directing traffic as always. Shortly after this, he took over the excavator, couldn't take any more! (just kidding).

Making a little progress.

Honestly, it is supposed to look like this.

Above is a picture Nancy took from the street above the house.

The green lawn is our neighbors. Our site is visible down below on the right side.

Our neighbor is a CPA from Shreveport, he spends summers and is a really nice guy.

A nice clear beautiful Alaska spring day.

The perk test for the septic system. Les was giving the engineer some advice as usual.

Telling fish stories.

Nothing has happened yet

The house build hasn't happened yet. So far we did a lot of shopping for basic stuff we didn't bring like: garbage cans, towels, shampoo, laundry soap.....
 
We did spend a couple of hours on the property cutting back the alder bushes to make the driveway wider so it doesn't scratch our new truck.

Finally, we were able to start the process as the ground frost receded and the roads become passable

for some of the necessary equipment.

Looking over the site and calculating the location of the walkout basement. We were using the geotech maps to figure out where the solid ground would be so we could minimize the amount of backfill needed for the foundation.

Letting the experts look over the situation, before Les weighed in:)

Assuming our positions for the summer

The view from the owners suite, such as it is now.

 

Off the ferry: Day 1 in Alaska

 This morning, Thursday May, 20, 2021

We arrived in Whittier at 5:50am and we made the 6am tunnel out of Whittier. 

Below are the gorgeous views we had on the ferry.

 

While in port we would walk the parking lot for 5 miles.

Back onboard we could email with the cell phone service.
 

This is our fabulous new F250 and cargo trailer. We stuffed these vehicles so full of furniture, construction materials and household goods. This is a good beginning on setting up our new house.

That is Glacier Bay National Park, as close as we've been so far.

We rented a 3 bedroom townhouse for 6 months in Soldatna which is about 90 minutes from Homer.

This will be our home base while the house is being built.

On the ferry

 We come to you live from the Alaska Marine Ferry Kennicott. (I mean we have cell service here)

It’s Monday morning and we’re in Ketchikan for a stop over. We haven’t seen any whales yet. The weather was rainy with rolling seas yesterday. 

We got a small cabin and it’s quite comfortable. 

The option to camp and not pay for a cabin exists. These two moved inside when the rain started. 

We brought food for snacking but we eat dinner in the cafeteria. It’s fair. We had soup, salad , burgers and fish & chips. 

We just got off and walked 5 miles in the huge parking lot. They won’t let us go off the property because of COVID. 

We saw an eagle. Juneau tomorrow. 

Washington State

  

Washington 

We had a nice, albeit long drive from Jackson Hole to Burlington, Washington on May 13th. 

We’ve eaten some good food on this trip, pizza, burgers, salads, salmon and Mexican food. 

We listen to audible books as we drive. It sure helps pass the time, and makes us smarter than staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

This was a huge piece of farm equipment we drove past. A lot of two lane roads through Idaho and some of Oregon.

The weather sure has improved over the week.

 

The top two pics are in the Cascades National Park 

We get on the ferry tomorrow, Saturday and will have no WiFi for 5 nights. When the ferry stops in Juneau and Ketchikan we will have cell service only for a few hours.

We did a bit of grocery shopping so we don’t have to eat all of our meals from the ferry cafeteria. Years ago, the State of Alaska closed all the bars aboard the ferries, so there has to be an adequate supply of beer and wine as well.

We’ve driven nearly 2500 miles since we left Texas. The new truck performed really well, especially through all the mountains and in the nasty weather. We feel good about having that truck up in Alaska, for everything it will have to cope with up there

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

The drive from Fort Collins to Jackson was an adventure. It snowed off and on the whole 473 miles. Les did great driving but it was more drama than we'd like.

Wildlife sightings: one buffalo, 2 badgers a few hours a part from each other and a few antelope and deer.

We woke to sunny skies albeit 40 degrees. We drove into the park and tried to see the Tetons but alas the clouds won. We had a lovely drive and went north to Yellowstone's south entry but it isn't open yet.

The water is so clear, every scene looks like a post card.

Today in the park the only wildlife we saw was a herd of buffalo and some white tailed deer from pretty far away. We were really searching too.

 

 Estes Park, Colorado

 

The obligatory picture at the sign 

Rocky Mountain Nation Park is beautiful even covered with snow.

We lucked out and saw mule deer, white tailed deer, elk and moose.

 

We're Building A House in Alaska! 2021

 

Our Alaskan Adventure

2021 

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We're going to build a summer home in Homer, Alaska.

In 2020, during the pandemic, we purchased 5 glorious acres in the eastern part of Homer  

The pictures above are
the location of the property with brilliant views of Kachemak Bay and the Homer Spit. 

The 2 pics above are us picking up the living furniture we bought in Dallas. We'll be driving our new Ford 250 pick-up truck to Bellingham, Washington. We are taking the Alaska State Ferry to Whittier, AK on Saturday, May 15th. We've purchased a cargo trailer and filled it with floor tile, furniture, and loads of household goods.

We left North Texas on Friday, May  7th, 2021 and slept one night in Raton, New Mexico

and two nights in Fort Collins where we had dinner with our cousin Mike and his

wife Diane. It was so great to see them and catch up.