Coffman Cove

Coffman Cove, AK

May 31, 2013

Latitude: N56.01117°

Longitude: W132.83250°

We left Meyers Chuck and headed over to Thorne Bay. It's a cute town that used to be the site of the biggest logging camp in the US. We are on Prince of Wales Island which is one of the largest islands in SE Alaska. It has also been extensively logged.

The weather was nice and I took a little hike along the shore and Bob went shopping at the local store. When the supplies were loaded we took off for Coffman Cove. 

Coffman Cove is on the northerly end of Prince of Wales and Bob has several friends there that he was looking forward to visiting. The run up the shore was easy going and the seas calm. 

We arrived around 11:00 and took a walk to see if we could find Bob's friend Ethel. We found her out clipping bushes in her front yard and got a tour of her house. Ethel collects things. Things from the beach like shrimp pot floats. And rocks. She has an impressive collection of Indian rocks, rocks that were used as hammers or grinders or spear points or cooking rocks. She has piles of them. She has photos and newspaper clippings and art and things, all piled high. But she seems to know where everything is and can find things fairly quickly when she wants to. Ethel walked back to the boat with us to have a bit of lunch and while we were on the dock another of Bob's friends, Liz, showed up.

Liz and her husband live here and up around Fairbanks and sometimes in New Port Richey, FL. They moved here from Upstate NY and homesteaded here in Coffman Cove. She went to school and started out as a medical lab technician but she has several advanced degrees in biology and ecology. She has been a school teacher, worked for Exxon on the oil clean up, worked on a Salmon trawler that she and here husband owned. Right now her husband is working as a paving contractor near Fairbanks and she will join him in a month or so.

They started out homesteading the land by living in a school bus they bought in NY and then drove up here They built the house they have in Coffman Cove by themselves, with wood harvested from their land. They have a big shop and a sawmill. They raise chickens and have several vegetable gardens. We went to Liz's house for dinner and most of what we ate she had produced herself. We had salad with eggs from her chickens, bread she baked, salmon that she had caught and smoked, roast chicken that  had been a mean spirited rooster she decided to get even with, the wine we drank was a raspberry wine she made. Very impressive. She said that she seldom goes to the store and can fill the meat locker from the venison she hunts in the fall. She told a story of a moose that kept getting into her garden so she figured she had fed the moose long enough now it was time for the moose to feed her.

Around here wood is abundant and many residents have sawmills. Residents are permitted to harvest up to 10,000 board feet of timber from the Tongas Forest free of charge. You can still homestead up here if you reside here for 36 months and build a home. Many of the residents have the same take on living here. You provide your own food either from fishing or hunting or both. You build your own place, grow all that you can and are as self sufficient as possible. I think you would have to live this way because there is no store close by and no Costco or Walmart. The closest Safeway is in Ketchikan, 60 miles away by boat.

This morning we woke up to rain and a patchy fog, just like AK is supposed to be. We will hang out here today and then go on tomorrow. Bob is doing some work on the electrical system today and we will go for a hike.

There is no cell service here so I don't know when this will post....