(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)
Because our home site is remote, everything we use has to be:
(a) local, like wood for building or fuel, or water, from the lake or
(b) expensively transported from elsewhere. Transport is determined by weather, weight, and dimensions. This means that shopping lists are developed for needs anticipated a year in advance, and have to include a hefty supply of redundant parts and equipment and dry goods.
During the winter, the rivers (the –na suffix in names like Yentna, Chena, Susitna means "river: in the Athabaskan language) become “highways” for remote areas, allowing snow machine trailer transport of large, heavy and flammable items, like mattresses, or 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel that are not allowed or are prohibitively expensive to transport by ski or float plane (usually Cessna 182s, 206s, or de Havilland Beavers and Otters). As of 2011, the planes from Anchorage charge $0.50 per pound unless you charter the whole plane. Since a whole plane charter costs from $300 – 600, there is an obvious incentive to fill it with over 150 pounds of goods, since a 50 lb bag of groceries will cost $25 to transport by itself. Each air taxi service has a shed or two at Lake Hood (the largest float plane airport in the world) for accumulated piles of purchases by bush cabin owners like us until time to fly them out.
The alternative mode of transportation is by snow machine cross country and up river 42 miles, about 3 hours. That is 42 miles to the boat launch. Not to Walmart. Before we bought our own snow machine, our neighbor charged us $300 per day for hauling everything he could carry on his trailer, which holds up to 1000 lbs. He snow machined up river, switched to his truck, stored near a river landing, and then made up to 13 shopping stops (for construction supplies, fuel, furniture, and anything else we could think of) before returning to the pier, loading up his snow machine trailer, securing his truck, and then traveling home, down river and cross country. That $300 works out to about $0.33/lb for shopping and transportation. It was well earned and easily paid!  |
| Brrrr! |
(a) local, like wood for building or fuel, or water, from the lake or
(b) expensively transported from elsewhere. Transport is determined by weather, weight, and dimensions. This means that shopping lists are developed for needs anticipated a year in advance, and have to include a hefty supply of redundant parts and equipment and dry goods.
During the winter, the rivers (the –na suffix in names like Yentna, Chena, Susitna means "river: in the Athabaskan language) become “highways” for remote areas, allowing snow machine trailer transport of large, heavy and flammable items, like mattresses, or 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel that are not allowed or are prohibitively expensive to transport by ski or float plane (usually Cessna 182s, 206s, or de Havilland Beavers and Otters). As of 2011, the planes from Anchorage charge $0.50 per pound unless you charter the whole plane. Since a whole plane charter costs from $300 – 600, there is an obvious incentive to fill it with over 150 pounds of goods, since a 50 lb bag of groceries will cost $25 to transport by itself. Each air taxi service has a shed or two at Lake Hood (the largest float plane airport in the world) for accumulated piles of purchases by bush cabin owners like us until time to fly them out.
