Welcome to the Alaskan Bush

Welcome BlogTrotters! I am so happy to be featured today and would like to welcome you all to Alaska.

I hope you brought your boots because we still have snow on the ground, although it is finally starting to melt.

Bush Alaska is where we live.

Specifically Dillingham.

We started out our Alaskan Adventure just over a year ago with a move from the suburban utopia of Vancouver, Washington to the Arctic Village of Kotzebue, Alaska.

How we came sell nearly everything we owned to move to rural Alaska is a crazy story (as in crazy good) and you can read all about it here.

The short story  is that our marriage and family were not thriving in our suburban life so we prayed for a change and an adventure.

And adventure is what we got when my husband was offered a job with a grocery company that operates stores all over rural Alaska.

We arrived in Kotzebue on March 30, 2009 with our two boys and the motto of “we’ll try anything once”.

During our six months stay north of the Arctic Circle we fell in love with bush living and experienced things that we could not have done anywhere else.

Like, watching the start of a dog sled race, eating seagull eggs, and watching the Arctic Ocean break up.

After spending the summer in Kotzebue we were transferred to Dillingham and that is where we have been for nearly 7 months now.

Dillingham is located on the Bristol Bay at the mouth of the Nushagak river and is world known for its commercial and sport salmon fishing.

Winter is over, the snow is melting and very soon our little town (pop. 2500) will triple in size as the commercial  fishing season begins.

Everywhere you turn here there are boats. Lots of them. Possibly more boats than people.

Also abundant is the wildlife. We have had moose, fox, and arctic hare right in our backyard. And rarely a day goes by that we don’t see at least one bald eagle.

Besides the fishing, Dillingham is also known for its access to some of the most amazing State Parks and Federal Reserves in the world. The nearby Wood-Tikchik State Park is the largest state park in the nation at 1.6 million acres and the entire park is open to camping, just beware of the bears!

Prefer walrus’? Maybe the Togiak National Wildlife Reserve is the place for you.

(photo taken from Togiak FWS site)

Also nearby is the 4 million acre Katmai National Park.

Want to visit?

You’ll need to book a flight because we aren’t on the road system.

You can book your flight through Alaska Airlines, but during most of the year (except June-August) your flight from Anchorage will be serviced by PenAir (a regional carrier) on a 30 seater twin prop Saab 340.

Don’t worry, they hand out earplugs.

Life here in Dillingham is simple………..

We have no movie theatre, no fast food, and no shopping malls.

We do have two small grocery stores (groceries are expensive………a gallon of milk is $7.89, a loaf of ‘good bread’ is $5.59…..not quite as expensive as they were in Kotzebue.), two gas stations, a bank, a post office, two drinking establishments, a handful of other businesses and somewhere between 3-7 restaurants; depending on the season.

Oh, and we have this:

Because fishermen stink.

Thanks again for stopping by and if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for Blog Trotting! It’s a fun way to see the world, even if you live in the Alaskan Bush!

Photo taken Easter Sunday, 2010.