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Let me preface this by saying we saw our land for the first time and we absolutely love it! It’s thickly treed, level, dry, and a hop, skip and jump away from a lake, two creeks and the ocean! How much better could it get?
I mean, check out our beautiful 3 part driveway:
Part 1 takes us down miles of beach
The second part takes us up a very interesting hill that will need some work
Part 3 is a nice level easy road
We spent some time traipsing around and exploring, as well as trying to find the property corners (we may need to get some professional help to make sure we find all the right boundary markers).
And now to the idiots part: we missed the tide!
Access to our property can be done one of two ways, either by 4 wheeler on the beach at low tide, or by a 4 wheeler access road that follows the coast. We had been told the oil company maintains the 4 wheeler access road and it would be usable. Boy, was that wrong! The whole thing was a boggy mess at every low spot!
We got stuck quite a few times.
Thank goodness our 4-wheeler came with a warn winch (Amazon affiliate link) attached! I’m not sure why we didn’t turn around after the first time we got stuck and just wait for low tide, but we kept on pushing. Eventually, it got too dark to see so at the next dry spot we made a fire, plopped down with our shotgun and dogs, and slept on the ground for a few hours until it got light again (we did not have any gear prepared for this, did I mention we were idiots?). Thank goodness for those short Alaskan summer nights! At daylight, we put out the fire and made it to the beach access, waited for the tide to go out, and drove the last several miles easily along the beach. What did we learn from this experience? ALWAYS play the tide and NEVER forget your emergency gear (Amazon affiliate link)!
And also, maybe plan better when heading into Bush Lite™ when 5 months pregnant!
Luckily, we had on the right kind of wearable gear for this adventure. Warm layers, waterproof pants, and these outstanding Under Armor waterproof boots (Amazon affiliate link). Kyle and I bought the same boots because they were super comfortable and we knew we needed waterproof shoes out there. These boots kept our feet dry through all the boggy bits we walked through, and neither of us got any blisters, even though this was how we broke them in! All in all, great boots and I would highly recommend them for hiking or hunting in wet areas.
(Update: Kyle returned his boots for Danners (Amazon affiliate link) as the stitching had started coming apart on one boot. It might have just been a mistake on that shoe though, and I’m still really happy with mine!)
By the time we got out and back to town, we decided to fork out for a hotel room. We both wanted to shower and nap all day. Even the dogs refused to get up once we were in the room! We’ll be staying here for a bit to rest, then headed back to Anchorage to pick up our stuff from the boat!
Bonus picture: Bear tracks!
High Tide Homestead participates in affiliate programs and may earn commissions from qualifying purchases on this post. See our Disclosure page for more information.
You guys are pretty funny alright!!!! I’m watching and waiting for the next update.