It's summer and we're back from our annual pilgrimage to see my wife's sister's family on the Last Frontier. I've written in the past about the awesome town (Homer) where they live and the different lifestyles of our families. This'll be a shorter one, a vignette of the 2023 trip.
At this stage the two families have seven children under 10 and everyone staying in the same house is, let's say, difficult. My wife's parents were up at the same time too, to add to that. We ended up securing a neighbors house (still not sure how they pulled that), they're big lots so it's down the street a bit, basically for free, at only the cost of a water delivery (these houses are not on public water). It was pretty nice to have our own space for sleeping and for it to be so close. The tradeoff is a loss of late-night hangouts and board games, a staple of the past and hopefully something we'll do again. Of course my wife and I were about as wiped as the children at the end of what were long, play and activity-filled days and there was just less interest this go-round.
So we're staying at this other house, which, unlike my in-laws place, is a second/vacation home, more like a cabin. It's pretty small and nicely decorated and this aspect was not at all ideal for my family with young children who'll break things. We were only there to sleep and I'd intentionally wake up in the morning before the boys to ensure they didn't get into trouble before we quickly headed out.
One of the nights my wife and I were relaxing before bed, enjoying the scenery, when we realized the power had gone out. After confirming it was the neighborhood and not just our house, it became obvious that our nice lodgings had suddenly become quite rustic. My phone needed charging. The un-powered on-demand hot water heater prevented anything from coming out of the tap so we also had no water. As my sister-in-law put it, 'You're getting the full Alaskan experience.'
She didn't know how right she was. In addition to this feeling of roughing it, we'd spent much of the night watching moose in our backyard. On most of our Alaska trips we've seen moose, but like once per. This time we saw several each day, they were thick right around where we were staying. The night the power went out we had a mother and calf meandering around in sight for a couple hours. And in what was a real highlight, we saw a moose face-off. At one point another mother/calf pair came through and tried to walk too close to the two that had gotten comfortable near us. The mother who'd been here first made the tiniest of runs at the newcomer and chased her off, but meanwhile the two calves were having an adorable fight of their own, close together with their front legs flailing pointlessly in the air in front of them. It was very short-lived but I was extremely happy to have gotten to see it. Nature can be harsh, and also terrifically funny.
That little moment is something I wanted to remember.
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