Summer Journey to Our Lakeside Cabin

[Music] do [Laughter] good morning everyone we are out in the chicken coop collecting some eggs and they're not laying that much right now because a lot of them are going broody unfortunately we have just three for today so far we have a lot of work to do we are going to be taking our boat out to our cabin for the first time very exciting stuff and there's a lot of prep work especially in the food department so we have to head inside to get some of our meals ready very excited for this trip i'm calling it the trip of a lifetime we're going out to our cabin we've never been there in the summer and we're taking the boat out there 60 miles up the river that being said we don't really want to focus on cooking out there we want our 100 focus to be on safely making it out to the cabin so we're going to make all our food here we're going to prepare it so we don't have to do any cooking out there we don't have to worry about firing up the stove or anything like that i've got some chili going right now this is moose chili beans tomato sauce all kinds of good things this is actually going to be for when we get back so we don't have to worry about making dinner we're also going to be boiling some water to make pasta salad it's one of our favorite things to have on the go and ariel's also going to make us some mousse breakfast burritos tell it did you try this uh yet any chance do you want to try it i tried it is it good pretty good the salad dressing is mainly our kefir cheese i'm just going to pour it right over the pasta salad we added salami pepperoncinis olives and red bell pepper and some feta too this is actually a meal that eric and i used to make a lot in their younger days when we packed lunches for work and school and all that stuff we really like to have this just pre-made and we put it in little tupperwares i always thought it was really delicious we don't really eat a lot like this anymore but in the summer you're so busy here all the time especially because we're taking this trip and it's really going to be a new exciting experience we want to have a lot of our food pretty much pre-made i don't have that much time to make everything from scratch today or anything like that it's not too bad looking nope nice and soft look at that squishy i think the tortilla factory i hope so usually you tuck them you can put them in that diagonal took them in tight well i guess you didn't you didn't put that much food that's not something i'll have to let you do it yeah let me do it well by the looks of all this food we are not going to go hungry on this trip we got these awesome breakfast burritos mousse meat potatoes pepper cheese cheese and some eggs arrow made some nice homemade flour tortillas we're gonna put these in the bags this should be okay we're not snow machine riding out there we're taking the boat so hopefully the trip is a lot smoother we're not gonna have to pad all of our food like we usually do so this is gonna be a pretty easy food packing trip i don't know all right burritos are done we're gonna head outside we're gonna start packing the boat so so all right we're getting things loaded up out here this is kind of how we're going to run it we're going to do our totes an ice chest on this side we're going to throw a dog bed in here out of the truck when we get there the dogs are going to sit here arrow or i will sit here one person will be driving last time we were out on the lake and we were testing out the boat we noticed that we wanted some more weight in the front so in the front on this trip we're gonna have our extra gas and water uh we're gonna bring seven gallons of water out there now and we're gonna leave it out there for our next trip so we can use it as drinking water we need it for as far as extra gas we're going to bring a 12 gallon tank up there we also have a 5 gallon jug and then we have the 12 gallon tank that the boat comes with we are going to bring a couple things out there for the wood stove install just like the caulking and a couple of things we're gonna bring a mosquito net for the bed we got all of our safety gear under the seat right here you know life vest and all the other things you're required to have in a boat here in alaska we don't really have much in the totes right now and that's because we're going to be putting some of our stuff in here if it starts to rain like our backpacks and camera gear things like that so it doesn't get wet they are calling for a little bit of rain on tuesday and we're going to leave on monday we're coming home tuesday we're just going for one night it is not going to be the trip where we install the wood stove we basically just want to make sure we can get out there before we start hauling you know tools and equipment out there to put that wood stove in we also are bringing two fishing poles in our tackle boxes hopefully we'll get in some fishing out there couple important pieces of gear we're bringing we're bringing a rifle this is a 4570 we're also bringing our sidearms to both ariel and i another very important piece of gear we're bringing out there is an electric fly swatter the flies are horrible out there in the winter time when we warm up the cabin and i have a feeling that mosquitoes are going to be really bad out there so we're bringing one of these i'm not too sure how i want to transport this rifle out there quite yet i have just a plastic gun case i might put it in or i think i might be pulling one of the ones off the polaris one of the gun boots and we'll put in there for now eventually i'd like to get some sort of gun rack in the boat but i like to use the boat a little bit more uh before i actually permanently mount this thing somewhere we still have a bunch of things inside the cabin that we're getting ready as far as like extra clothes and things like that because i have a feeling it can get pretty cold out there even in the summertime and another thing we're bringing is our waders and that's because we know just by going up there on snow machine there's going to be a couple really narrow shallow rocky creeks that we've got to bring this boat up so there's a good chance we're going to have to get out in the water and use some ropes and pull the boat through some rapids but we're hoping there's some good water levels and we won't be too bad but we're gonna we're gonna bring our waders just in case dog jackets dog food we got a few other things like i said to get ready inside and we'll be ready to take the boat out one of them a couple other things i want to show you guys is we went ahead and put together a tool kit that's going to stay in the boat it goes underneath in the seat too and this is tools specific to this boat so it has the types of wrenches that i need if we do any work to the jet or electrical work or anything like that so got a nice tool kit in here now and we also got this pretty sweet light it's a 400 000 candle power and it runs off the 12 volt socket which just has a 12 volt socket and also has a usb port so got a nice light for out there the daylight hours right now are pretty insane it doesn't get dark until actually it doesn't really even get dark so we probably won't use the light right now but early spring late fall it gets dark and it gets cold out there so it's gonna be nice having that light our gps unit that we ordered finally came in we got a garmin montana 700 this is not like a marine gps it's more of like a hiking or an off-roading one but i wanted to go with this one so it's not mounted to the dash we want something that we can just both look at one of us can navigate the other person can be driving so pretty cool a gps it's got a nice big screen on it we've got both of our sidearms and that just about does it for out here in the boat i think we're all ready to go okay oh yeah here we go fireweed these are just fiddly mounds oh wow these are good fiddleheads back here oh the firewood's really thick is that what you're saying nice big ones you know it probably grows right next to that older bush we should start a fieldhead farm those are raspberries well we decided that we wanted to come back for some more fiddleheads for our dinner tonight yes everything we made with these the other day turned out amazing we got more of the watermelon berry shoots and the fireweed shoots we have a very exciting dinner planned for tonight something we haven't eaten in a long time get a couple more yeah they don't really i don't think they like a lot of lamps oh yeah we love eating fish and some of our favorite fish is actually halibut we haven't had halibut in a long time and one of our friends was nice enough to give us a big old chunk of halibut so that's what we're eating tonight the way we like it the best is i cook it in a cast iron skillet till it's almost done i got the oven set at 350. then i'm going to pour a little bit of ariel's homemade mayonnaise on there salt and pepper fresh herbs a little parmesan cheese finish it off in the oven for about 15 minutes it's going to come out perfect we're going to get that going right now and then we're going to start on our fiddleheads and fireweed chutes that looks amazing dinner is served and we will see you guys tomorrow on the river for hopefully a good trip well we finally hit the road it's about 10 in the morning and we're down at the gas station topping off the boat we're gonna head to where we launch the boat this is actually the same place where we leave with our snow machines in the winter so we're just about on the river yeah i'm gonna tell you right now that thing does not move the way our old one does yeah no it's like you can't stop right there it says no stopping i said go all the way down that's fine okay [Music] all right guys i think we've been on the river for about 25 minutes not gonna lie it's pretty intimidating when we first got on that river we've never been in uh strong currents like this but i'm getting the hang of it it's actually really fun and we're making a lot of progress we're we're getting down this river a lot faster than we did in the winter on our snow machines taking a little break letting the dogs out explore around here it's beautiful looks completely different than it looks in the winter time there's a bunch of dead hooligan or smelt here i don't know how they die maybe the water level drops or maybe they spawn and die i don't know but there's like they're just like lining the banks so there's a really good hooligan run down here move next year we can get up here in the boat and check it out don't eat that bow bow's having a good time he's not cold and he's not in our his little dog sled trailer so like eric said it's kind of scary out here i'm trying to enjoy it it's beautiful i mean i know that we're gonna have a lot of fun out here i think just the first time out it's a lot of stress involved we have boating experience um we have a lot of experience on this river but well maybe not a lot but a whole winter's worth and it's just a little stressful first time out here there's not that many folks and it's a moving river and it's big so we're looking forward to getting to the smaller river and hopefully our cabin so far we're super happy about the navigation because i'm kind of looking at it while eric's driving there's a lot of channels it's a river that has a lot of braids in it and so it can be a little confusing i mean you've got to visually use your eyes and see where you want to go but also i'm trying to use the map a little bit and once we have it mapped and we know that's a good channel we'll probably stick to that one on the way home but there are a lot of gravel bars here too and just debris floating so we want to make sure we don't hit anything it's a new experience for sure for us and i think i think we're going to keep going my chest is still tight i just i feel scared there you go though right on your bed okay confident do you want to have the navigation with you would it be more helpful or no no i don't i don't think [Music] right [Music] easy [Music] evo alrighty guys break time we are moving along this river uh we've been on for two hours so beautiful day out here this is awesome go okay it's a little bit windy out here but it's going much better it's a nice day we brought a whole bunch of extra clothes and the dog's jackets and they're doing they're doing really good so it's a lot different of an experience than coming out here in the winter as you can imagine there's a seagull it's actually memorial day today this is memorial day weekend we're really not seeing anyone out here we've probably passed like maybe five or six boats going the other way no one's passed us this guy's got a nice big boat right here we're cruising at about 18 miles to 90 miles an hour coming up this river and we're going with the current on the other river we're doing about 26 miles an hour you guys ready to go [Music] so well we've made it up to i don't know what i'd call the area but we're real close to our cabin but the ride has been uneventful we've been on the main river and now we're on a smaller creek almost like a lake and i just i had to take a couple casts i couldn't help myself um there's a lot of pike up here but we're gonna put our waders on and we're about to go through a section that probably gonna be the hardest section to get through real narrow creeks with big rocks and fast-moving water there might be a couple sections where we have to actually get out of the boat and you know pull it up with ropes from the side so we're gonna put on our waders and we're gonna see what happens you think you're fishing the wrong direction cool i'm actually more excited to probably fish strangely how about you i think if you have to go off if you're on that side you want to hook the hook on that one like on the side can i do that in the middle i live in the middle for now but then depending on what side we have to go on [Music] can you pull your way more do you want to know hold on just keep your eyes out [Music] i'm going through the trees so hold on see anything well we knew that this place is a little challenging to get to in the summer anytime something says boat accessible don't always believe it but uh that's called the rock garden behind us and i'm sure it's earned that name i think the water is at its normal level we were just gonna try and see if we could get through it nah we hit a rock like first thing there's rocks like coming up and three feet down or three inches down um how long did it take us 30 minutes so we just spent probably 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get our heavy heavy boat up this channel and i think it should be smooth sailing from here on out we just saw a huge fish too did that move what the heck was that backwards oh he got off had my first pike on he got off though it was only about a foot long i think we're drifting back into the rapids so we're going to continue upstream to the cabin we've we've seen fish and we've hooked once this is cool well we haven't made to the cabin yet but these fishing spots are awesome looking so we're gonna try and cast out the line a couple more times i just had a bite but didn't land that one either right after we made it past the channel i'm fairly certain i saw salmon i think it was the king salmon i don't think the sockeyes are up here yet but kind of cool busting out the meps this is one i've been looking forward to using it's called the flying sea it's got like a little rubber tail on it spinner let's see if we can get any bike with this one oh look a piece of wood this is a great spot the mosquitoes are here is that really it we're gonna make our way up the hill the trail is very grown over i mean there never really was a trail this is kind of just a little trail that we established in the winter season and i know this is it because last time we got stuck in overflow when we left really bad and eric had to run up and get that piece of particle board and get us out looks like we had a birch fall and i took down another tree so see if we can get through this it's really growing back in huh there's our yellow rope i know i was just about to see the ropes there kick it off your back man it can okay the view is awesome from here it's really pretty here in the summer it's really pretty here in the summer but it almost like looks better in the winter because there's so much stuff flying around now well we made it that's all that matters right we're live watch this we need new stairs apparently it smells the exact same pine soul yay it just smells like a cabinet just doesn't smell i think i can get it i wish cranberry from last year look what these all are really changes out here we've got high bush cranberries we've seen raspberries bluebells watermelon berries we've seen fiddleheads we've seen i forgot what that's called we have it how's this bush this is really cool out here it's you we couldn't even see the cabin from down the lake because uh foliage and so it's called foliage spoilage spoilage the leaves they all grew in the cabin's just like completely hidden but there's a saw here i've actually got two of these ones it's nice and sharp i'm gonna cut a couple of little trees that are in our path but yeah awesome trip this is cool coming out here in the summer it's not cold well we figure out how much fuel it takes to get out here it took us quite 11 gallons that's 12 gallon tank we fit 13 in there i think it's got about two left and then i got a full 12 gallon tank here with 13 gallons in it i'm gonna swap this one in so we brought plenty of fuel that means we get a tool around the lakes and do some more fishing well i tell you the hill at this cabin it's not really any easier with no snow we just lugged our toad up here this has a bunch of stuff uh that we're gonna use inside the cabin a lot of stuff that we're gonna leave here some of it's for installing that wood stove but we have a trail camera up here just kind of right by the cabin i don't know if there's anything on it so i'm gonna put it in the camera and see if we got anything cool on there well unfortunately i don't know if the trail camera takes the image in a different format but it won't let me look at them on the camera but it does say there's 204 photos on here so i'm going to swap out the trail camera with the new chip it's still got full battery so we'll just set it up again for next time we'll bring this chip home and see if we got anything and i think we're going to head down to the lake summertime here is awesome we have all this daylight it is 4 25 in the afternoon right now we got like the rest of the night ahead of us this is going to be an awesome trip the main goal let's just see if we can make it out here on our boat and we did that it wasn't easy but we made it out here so now we're going to have some ooh it's kind of fun being lightweight that way okay check it out real quick sure there may be weeds over there didn't see him jump no i didn't see him jump he jumped like in the air oh there he is there he is i got him he's a big one he's a big one do you need the net we don't we don't have a net are you gonna pull him up aboard what are you gonna do oh yeah he's a nice one oh yeah he's a 20-incher where are you going to pull him honey i don't know if you bring him there beauty hey why don't you bring that over here he's barely on oh yes that's a nice one first pike at the cabin look at that thing i bet he's 20 he's he's over 20 inches dang i left the measuring tape back at the cabin awesome what spoon are you using that girl that uh one i caught him on nancy lake too there's a lot of weeds though you gotta hit you gotta get in the water and go right there we're trying the weedy areas that's usually where the pike are we're not really looking for anything for dinner we brought plenty of food but it's really fun to fish out here and there's a storm coming in for sure it's going to rain tomorrow on our way home so i think i don't know if that's going to affect the fish probably not going to stay out here much longer i don't know this yellow spoon i have on here it's like a square spoon this is the one that's been working just had two more hit it i guess it could have been the same fish but we'll see if i can get another one in here i saw him grab it is he off no he's on he's a big one he's splashing yeah you gotta get him out to get him off right he inhaled it looked down his throat okay not that bad all right another pike these things are so much fun to catch you can see them coming because the water is nice and clear now this guy came from way back in the bushes he's got some battle scars on him he's a strong one oh yeah there we go you got him that time they're really feisty well they're so feisty another one this one's this one's a little smaller he's a rocket beautiful little pike there's a lot of pike out here apparently this is this is amazing a lot of fun oh you feel that a fish you got one a little one a little one yeah you see it no oh well i lied he said oh no poor guy okay that's my first pike the pikeslayer look he's a nice size right that's like the same size as the last one right that's really great this is what he was eating okay that's sick oh no oh it's leech sorry it was a leech and it attached to me i think those are the leech they're eating and it literally sucked onto me it's a little suction cup i catch the little ones where are those alrighty epic pike fishing was the best we've ever done that was amazing i think we're out there for i don't know about two and a half hours i lost kind of how many we caught we're back up at the cabin we're gonna get some things right down here because there's like errol said there's a storm coming in it is gonna rain tonight so gotta get some stuff covered up so it doesn't get wet what's he doing well coming up here in the summer i've realized that this cabin is a lot taller than i first realized you're on the end of that deck you're like six feet off the ground the steps are completely gone this is rotted out we've got no steps here so we'll need to build all new steps or we'll have to keep jumping up there there's some supplies here i brought up that wood that's gonna be for the wood stove install but i'm not sure what's underneath there we're going to kind of walk around the cabin and check it out no new bear damage or animal damage that we can see so far so i think the pine saw worked out pretty good so these are some of the trees we cut down last time and there's quite actually quite a few more trees that fell down but no damage to the cabin so that's good well not much under here nothing i can see it's really usable there's a gas can and there's some firewood and some two by fours a lot of kindling that's about it no gold or money or anything like that the mosquitoes are biting me i knew they were gonna be out this is pretty much what i expected they're not even full blown yet but they're pretty bad of course with all this foliage i wanted to show you something really cool these are spruce tips and very cool it's the growing point of the spruce tree this white spruce tree and at our house they are not even close to being ready so pretty cool that they're starting to be ready this is actually a really good size to pick them but we're not looking to harvest any right now these are really delicious they taste surprisingly like lemon lots of plants that we recognize out here this is a different fern than we have where we live i thought something that was very interesting was this deck has been out here for i don't know how long it's been out here for a long time but for at least you know a good 10 plus years which is the snow load on it every year no one removed it so i feel like that's really impressive about this good deck oh man you still got the hops not me though okay time to head inside okay welcome to the inside of the cabin it looks pretty much the same and we actually just had a 6.0 or maybe it was a 5.8 i don't remember what it was yesterday earthquake everything's still fine here but we brought some stuff up we got a mosquito net we used one of these at home at our cabin these are amazing if you want a good night's sleep brought our little mosquito swatter slash fly swatter this is paraffin lamp oil you've seen one of our videos when we came up here we brought our lantern because we had all the fuel here we're using the wrong fuel and thanks to the comments we realized that we got a whole gallon jug of fuel for the lantern so this should last us quite a while we brought coffee of course this is one we've never had it's folgers i'm not gonna lie i actually like folger's coffee so we're gonna have this friday night and tomorrow we brought up some stuff for the wood stove we have caulking gun we have the caulking to do um the part on the roof we're gonna put the chimney through and then last time we came up here we realized we were missing one of the pins for the door on the wood stove and when we got home and the snow thawed i actually found it sitting on our deck at home so we got both of the pins for the wood stove one other thing we're gonna be leaving here is this little strainer this is gonna make it a lot easier in the winter time when we're gonna be melting snow and we got to strain it for drinking water or just dishes water the gps worked really good for us on the way up here aaron and i both agreed that it would have been extremely confusing to make it up here there's so many braids in this river so it did use a lot of battery it's got 20 now it's been on since this morning i had the brightness all the way up so we're just gonna charge this we brought a little yeti we're gonna charge this a couple other things but yeah gps did great this trip do you know my jacket and stuff 14 issues for 12 that's not cheap that is cheap it's less than a dollar an issue that's not that cheap is it well this is 250 or 225 if you buy it just as it is you tell me it's a little bit more beautiful no it would i was saying that's why that's a good project and actually clear path yeah snow machine and summer path the dead trees have to go um hey they're eating my food maybe we can aim at pike paradise that's stupid sorry pike alley pike slew i don't think it's a slew it's a lake [Applause] no this is just going to be our new one we use it so nice this is in the 80s man this is brand new never used from the 80s and then i'll bring the dog food out cool well getting some last thing secured down here for the rain and believe it or not it's 10 o'clock at night so i got plenty of daylight left yeah it's very late and or it's not very late but it's still light out we usually go to bed around midnight but tonight we're hitting the sack early we came we conquered i feel like we got out here that's really exciting and we got to catch fish first time out here and we made it head upstairs we're going to put that mosquito net in everything else isn't it so pretty out here well we're going to bed but walking up and down the hill gave me some more energy so i got this little uh i don't know what the heck this thing is sickle it's not a sickle it's kind of like a sickle i think it's meant for cutting grass just beating down some brush there's a couple big devils club i wanted to get rid of i think i need a machete out here airline we're talking about the next time we come up here we're probably gonna bring the chainsaw and other stuff because we definitely need a better trail up here everything's just so overgrown but yeah sex little things work pretty cool there we go cool so well good morning everyone woke up to a really rainy morning and we're getting some coffee going and we're just getting everything cleaned up getting everything situated gotta feed the dogs we're gonna start heading home down the river it's going to be a wet trip there you go boys they like this stuff so time to do it dude you ready go home all right another trip to the cabin honestly it was really nice coming out here the summertime mosquitoes weren't too bad we had nice warm weather we didn't have to start a fire i think it was about 70 degrees in the cabin the whole time we definitely slept great it is raining right now we got 60 mile river ride home we got to push through some of those rapids yeah it's gonna be another journey on the way home but we'll see you guys next time it's a moose it's definitely raining out here we brought our rain jackets but even the summertime in alaska you got to wear layers still gets cold all right well we made the rock garden look easy coming down it was a lot easier going with the current dragging that boat up it was very difficult but the rain has led up there's a little sliver of blue skies over there hopefully it holds for us and we'll have a nice pleasant ride home down the river and then up the river all right we're gonna head home look at the plane captain bow [Music] nice okay we've had our first mishap we're in a pretty big part of the river and i wanted to open up the boat and kind of let her go full throttle see how fast we could get her going we were doing about 35 then i cut it back to our normal speed and then the engine started to sputter in the middle of the river and then it died and we kind of started floating down the river but luckily i got to start back up again and barely got it over to shore and i noticed our gas tank was like kind of suctioned in like it didn't have enough vent uh it didn't have air venting out of it so i think that's what the problem was i'm pretty sure it's because we put too much gas in that gas can these are 12 gallon gas tanks and i think we put like 13 gallons in them so i'm guessing that's what the problem is we're going to kind of push the boat out where we can run the motor for a little while and make sure it's good to go because we got lucky that we're close to a shore here all right we made it yes another 60 miles up the river just about to come into the boat launch awesome day out here yeah we only saw like a total of maybe three people i think on the way in three other boats but all in all everything went really good we're gonna do a few changes for next time and we'll be ready to come back out here in the summer yep see you guys later good boys [Music] come to bed now these things are the best i'm telling you oh my gosh cool are you comfy i'm gonna be there thank you honey you're welcome any bad time stories come to bed and i'll tell you one

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 1,055,591

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, alaska vlog, cabin life, debt free living, tiny house alaska, fishing in alaska, cabin living, off grid living alaska, off grid cabin, daily life in alaska, northern pike alaska, fishing for pike, pike fishing alaska, summer alaska, jon boat fishing, alaska fishing, lake fishing alaska, pike fishing lures, garden alaska, homestead alaska, jet boat alaska, g3 jet boat, river boat, flat bottom boat, daylight alaska, homesteading alaska

Id: 9kFv557hhTY

Length: 48min 45sec (2925 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021