The New Cabin

At some point in the future I'll backtrack to the goldstream and goldhill cabins and  go into more depth about those places, but as for now onto the new cabin.

The summer of 2003 a number of events and changes occurred and it was time to shut down the shop I had at an historical park and find some land to call my own.  For a number of years I had set up a tent with another vendor at the state fair, and this year was no different in that respect.  There was one exception, and that was I no longer was simply casually batting around an idea to finally get a place to call my own.  Though at this point it was still very vague as to what would happen, and little time to set much into motion.  That time would come in September and later on after I no longer had to deal day to day with the shop, or so I thought.

I had gone over to a local sawmill's display at the fair to check out shell packages and pricing with the idea that would be the best route for me once I found a piece of land and finish one of those out with the most difficult part done for me.  I happened across a an offer they had of $1,000 off this finished unit.  As they were moving the base of their operations from the sawmill to their location in North Pole where they sold trailers, they had brought this unit in to use as a temporary office until they had constructed permanent offices in the building behind it.  The reduction in price due to they would be using it for the two months until the offices were ready.

Yes, it was very much 'cart before the horse' and changed what plans I had made by then, here was a move in ready cabin ready to go a good 60 days down the road.  Even if I just wintered over in this place and did follow though on the idea to build something else, I could then put this to use as a guest house and be that far ahead of the game.  So, I did go check it out and wound up putting a deposit down on it even though I still had no place to put it.

I had been already been looking around for some land, and felt if I could just step it up I could get that accomplished as well since it's not beyond reason that a piece of raw land could be closed upon within 30-45 days given the right conditions.  So the search was put into high gear despite another month before I could close down the shop for the season.

I did find a few possibilities, which were somewhat limited as I wanted to get a place outside of the organised borough where I didn't have to deal with a taxing authority, zoning or ordinances, and I also wanted to be on a main highway if possible not only for easy access, but also because I had the idea to eventually do something along the lines of a B&B or campground, which would be more difficult hidden away where some might have difficulty finding it.  What really surprised me is how unmotivated the realtors in Fairbanks were with their attitude to raw land and remote properties, to the point where they simply dropped the ball on answering questions or simply told one to go out and look at what we have and if you find anything of interest then we can talk about it.   One realtor in particular was so hands off that other than publishing a catalogue of his listed properties, talk was that he would tell a seller upon hanging up a sign that they would likely never hear from him again until he had an offer on the place.  I did consider a few parcels up around Circle and Central, but as most of what was available in that area was First Nation lands, they had such strict covenants on them that it seemed more like a person was leasing the land, needed to get permission from the council to do anything on the land, and perhaps even restricted in how one might resell the land, so that was pretty much out.  One property that might have worked was way up on the Elliot Highway, 10 or 20 acres with a well fenced in dog yard (for sled dogs) that would have made an idea garden site, but on the down side, it would have meant many miles of gravel highway and travelling either to limited supplies at Manley Hot Springs or all the way back into Fairbanks for most all of what might be needed.  I did pose a number of questions on the property to the realtor, most importantly if the generator shed contained a working generator and never received a response to the questions so I set that idea off on the back burner.  I did also come across a parcel near Big Delta and Delta Junction, which supposedly had an abandoned structure on it, but I could not get much out of that realtor either, including whether the property could be subdivided or not as it was really too much land and at a higher cost than was practical.  One property that I actually did take the time to go out and view was along the Park's Highway between Nenana and the Denali Borough line (within sight of the sign).  This property was the front 10 acres of a 20 acre parcel, overall a fairly decent piece of land with a drive cut in, but two things that struck me is how far off the highway it sat (due to the very wide highway easement, so much so that the highway could not be seen through the overgrowth) and more importantly, the intertie that ran behind the parcel.  One does have to question the safety of living so close to high tension lines and power pylons, and there was also the question of the easement to the back 10 acres and would that also be constantly used by the power company to access the lines.  The location of this and any Delta properties also were a matter of concern.  Nenana is classified as a city, and therefore has set up some taxing authority (being at the junction of the Alaska Railroad and the Tanana River which leads to the Yukon River, it is the state's largest inland port), there is only about 20 miles on either side of it that are unorganised, and Delta is at most 30 miles beyond the Fairbanks North Star Borough as well, so in either case both could very easily be annexed as a source of additional revenue and one would wind up paying property taxes without receiving any services in return being so far out.

At that point I set my sights even further out, and that's how I ended up on Tok,  The realtor down here gave me some leads on a few properties and along with another vendor at Alaskaland we took a day to travel down and look things over.  Somehow I got the directions to one of the properties mixed around and we ended up on a lot that if was up for sale would have been totally unacceptable, and one other we looked at was on an area that had burned over years ago but still had not recovered very much.  So those were rather disappointing, though he saw one that he would have liked that was different from what I was looking for.  At that point we took some time to poke around, like going into the grocery store, and at this point I felt it more than deserved a second chance, so we dropped in unannounced on the realtor.  She pointed out a few other possibilities that I could research later, and directed us to the first property that she had suggested that we didn't find, so starting to head back we stopped to see it.

We drove down the laneway, parked in the clearing, I got out of the truck and knew then and there that this was the one and Tok was the place.