I really tried to avoid writing this post. I feel a little annoyed at jumping on the ‘pandemic wagon, ” as it seems everyone is trying to cash in on our crazy new reality. But I have been asked so many times lately about how this has affected our lives. I thought I’d lay out all the changes here:

Flying was weird.

We’ve flown between Washington and Alaska dozens of times for work and visiting our families. We’d been in Washington for the winter to work, with plans to stay until fishing season started. When coronavirus arrived and states started issuing stay at home orders, we panic bought tickets so we wouldn’t be stuck away from home. It cost us about $1000 to get 4 humans and two dogs’ home. Usually it’s around $5-600 per person just for WA to AK tickets. Our flight was cancelled twice, meaning we flew out at 8pm rather than 6am. Security practically waved us through (I skipped the xray with the baby and was never wanded) in less than 5 minutes. Our flight had enough empty seats that nearly every person had their own row. Kyle even got to lie down and slept the whole way!

We drove the rest of the way from Anchorage to avoid taking a second flight. We made it just before Alaska basically shut down, and self quarantined for 2 weeks at home by choice. The next week the Governor issued the 2 week quarantine after travel from out of state. I was glad we had already made that choice, especially coming from Seattle.

Grocery shopping is also weird, and a little harder.

At stores, one of us stays in the car with the girls and the other does all the shopping. Just less of us collecting germs to bring home that way, especially with young kids who want to touch everything. The biggest change with this is the purchasing restrictions. When you do all of your shopping for the month in one go, people assume you are panic buying. And when you are nearly 3 hours from the grocery store, being limited to one carton of eggs or one gallon of milk means more trips. That $30 in gas for each trip to town adds up. At least sometimes stores will wave the ‘one per customer’ rule when they find out why we need two at a time.

We don’t visit friends as often as we used to.

While we are excited to see everyone and catch up on our friendships, we’ve been practicing social distancing. Many of our friends and their families work oilfield jobs. Slope companies have imposed some very strict quarantine rules to avoid the spread of coronavirus up north. This means no visits from friends when they are home. We also call before showing up to chat, which is the opposite of Alaska’s usual ‘stop by when you’re in town!’ mentality.

And my least favorite:

I feel so impolite doing it, but we don’t shake hands anymore when meeting new people. We wave to people on the trail and beach, more than stopping to talk now. It makes me feel like an unfriendly jerk to just pass by, but it’s the safer option right now.

Other than that, most of our daily lives are exactly the same as any other year out here.

Okay, there is one other change. Coronavirus might have lit a fire under us to get things done. Things like expanding our garden area, building our new greenhouse and cutting a driveway to where we’ll build the new cabin. With the economy the way it is, meat shortages expected, and continued buying restrictions, we need to supply a sizeable chunk of our needs out here. Back to the homesteading roots that brought us out here in the first place!

In other news, King Salmon season is open this year and starts in just a few short weeks, so we are keeping ourselves extra busy until then. Depending on how the season goes, we might purchase a GoPro or drone to break into doing videos of our lives out here. We’ve ordered new blades for our sawmill and are waiting for more trees to arrive for planting. While exploring our land we found a hill and decided that is where we would put the new cabin.

And just like this upside-down picture of my driveway ‘pond’, I’m trying to remember that life is all about perspective! I expect we will be very busy this summer, with lots of adventures to share!

 

Tagged : coronavirus / Homesteading / pandemic