So the big question is – WHY MOVE TO ALASKA?!!!

It’s a funny question.  Ever since I moved here, I get people all the time saying things like “Wow… Alaska…. You’re so lucky!  Wish I could too…  But I can’t…
 
So let’s start here.  In this post I’ll tell you why we moved here, and later I’ll answer some common questions relating why you can too!  
 
I was in my early 20s when I first started looking for a great place to settle. 
 
I wanted a place that had clean water, clean air, and a more natural as well as enjoyable way of life.  
 
I wanted to be more in charge of my own fate: I grew up in a city and quite honestly they always scared me; cities just had too many people, and too few resources. 
 
I wanted to be more independent, to get back to the basics, and live somewhere I could either grow some of my own food fairly easily, or where I could hunt, fish and gather a good proportion of it. 
 
I also wanted to go back in time a little, back to a day when kids could go to the park safely, where life was a little slower, and where the good old fashioned community helped themselves. 
 
Admittedly as an Australian, Alaska was not even on my radar at the time, I had been travelling around Australia trying to find that perfect place.  But one day, a strange call came.  A very good friend of mine, Ron, invited me to come for a visit…

Ron had moved to Alaska many years before after quitting the computer industry in Silicone Valley.  His thoughts at the time were – “Is this it? Work until I retire?  Make lots of money so I can get a yuppie wife, and have yuppie kids who want to go to the yuppie mall while I live in stress & age at high speed?” That picture did not leave him feeling satisfied so he headed north to find freedom…
 
He’d been attracted to Alaska for many years and had spent many a vacation travelling to different areas, exploring and fishing. He wanted to move to Alaska but could not figure out where.  The northern towns were amazing, but too cold. Other towns on the road system would get flooded with tourists in summer, totally changing the town and lifestyle. 
 
So enter, Prince of Wales Island.  It seemed to tick all the boxes.  It was southern, and had very mild summer & winter temperatures. It was an island, & thus did not get flooded with endless campervans. It even had an extra bonus - a great road system where you could drive to many small towns spread over a wide area, you were not just stuck around one main town.  POW also had islands dotted everywhere, and this opened up a whole new world to explore! It had some of the world’s best hunting & fishing & the climate was also mild enough that you could still grow many foods easily. It seemed perfect!  But was it? Well no, there was, this thing called the rain… And POW got an awful lot of it…
 
Ron had a mental block over the rain for a long time. And then all of a sudden, he got over it. One day he suddenly realized that if it were not for the rain, Prince of Wales Island would be expensive, overcrowded, and not so wild & free anymore.  
 
With that realization, he packed the car, put it on the ferry, and moved to Prince of Wales Island! I came to visit some years later and never left…