In the morning, Chelsea took me over to meet Jim and Bea, the couple who own the homestead. They’re interesting, lovely people. He’s in his eighties now and his family were among the original Alaskan homesteaders so he’s lived at Caribou Creek, surrounded by mountains and rivers and glaciers, on and off since he was a small child, long before there was a proper road out there. She’s a minister of the Unitarian church, probably the most liberal denomination there is, which makes her very unusual in as conservative a state as Alaska. Even though I’d just turned up on their doorstep they made me incredibly welcome and I ended up staying at Caribou Creek for more than a week.
Jim and Bea a few yards from their house at Caribou Creek.
The weather was spectacular that first afternoon so Chelsea and I went down to the river bar and sunbathed. It’s a truly glorious spot, where Caribou Creek meets the Matanuska River.
A perfect day to do nothing at all.
Moose prints in the mud.
Jim and Bea live on the ground floor of a big house they’re in the process of building and which I didn’t take any photos of. Chelsea was staying in a cabin a hundred yards away, which was smaller but still had room to sleep eight or ten people at a stretch.
Not a small cabin.
I don’t remember exactly what I did for the eight nights I spent at Caribou Creek but a lot of it was sitting around looking at pretty views with Chelsea, hanging out with Jim and Bea and going to bed at 6am. There’s something about that homestead that makes time run differently from usual: it just drifts by pleasantly without you really realising it. Even the view from the armchair in the living room of the cabin was beautiful.
The mountain Lion’s Head as seen from the armchair, with a pretty fringe of pink fireweed.
The cabin was rustic in the sense that it didn’t have running water or electricity but it was very comfortable in there. There were propane lamps to light the living room in the evening and the upstairs had high enough ceilings for me to stand up without banging my head, which is more than you can say for some cabins I’ve been in (as is the very existence of an upstairs).
This is what cabin living in Alaska looks like. That’s a gas lamp, in case you were wondering.
In one of the bedrooms upstairs, a bear had once wandered in up the steps and got stuck so there were some hilarious claw-shaped scratch marks on the walls from when it tried to extricate itself.
Poor bear. Poor wall.
One afternoon, Jim gave me a tour of the outdoor sawmill he built and has been using for decades. He’s well known in the area for building log cabins and selling logs and there was a sign on the wall of the cabin we were staying in for his Caribou Cabin Company.
On the same spot since 1958! (Jim’s company, that is, not Chelsea).
Jim’s sawmill is incredibly picturesque. It looks like something from the goldrush era and the scenery around it is stunning.
Lumber yard.
Logs.
Sawmill and sawdust.
With Lion’s Head in the background.
What a place to work! I had such a nice time with Jim and Bea, who are great storytellers and great fun, but eventually I managed to drag myself away. I went north, which was the opposite direction to Chelsea who left at the same time as me to look for a job in Girdwood, so once again I was on the road alone.
Total distance hitchhiked: 3,460 km.
Total number of rides: 28.
Distance from Nabesna: 317 km.