Hugh,
When I saw the title “Moving to Alaska”, I thought to myself “WHY?” Although my wife and I have lived in Los Anchorage for over 40 years, yes, it’s getting very blue here. I must echo everything Bryan B. has said and more. About two years ago my wife and I saw the trend coming and worked and paid off our home, and our rental is almost paid off. If needed, it will be our BOL due to its size. We also partially closed our business. We get two ships a week to Anchorage; 85% of our groceries come here from “outside”. In January one of the ships was down for two weeks, and if you knew what to look for you could see the shelves were getting empty. Instead of three or four items “face” on a shelf, there were eight to ten of the same item “face” with nothing behind the cans or jars. Add this kind of thing to earthquakes. We had a big one in January that if it would have been in the lower states would have caused millions of dollars in damage. I keep telling my wife that we should make a trip to Idaho to check things out. I look Redoubt Realty over on a regular basis. Living up here isn’t as easy as many think; there is a short growing season, wildlife isn’t as plentiful as one would imagine; you need a river boat, 4-wheeler or airplane to get to the better places to hunt. We are about to move from an El Niño to a La Niña. That means our winters are going to be normal with 20 to 40 degrees below zero weather and lots of snow again. – C.B.