Camping at Abandoned Alaskan Homestead with Modified Off-Road Kei Truck

Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and we're back for another homestead adventure. A few months ago I bought this homestead and found that it was full of abandoned equipment. Equipment's been breaking down, buildings have been catching on fire, and we've been breaking our backs trying to build a road through the swamp. But I've got a feeling now things are about to turn a corner. Well it's been several weeks since I figured out the road I was building wasn't completely on my property and I have to admit that was a bit of a low point. However, I figured out a solution to my problems. So I went to the tax records and figured out who owned the property that my road was on and I went to the owner and explained to him what I did. I said I would move the road, buy an easement, or buy the property outright. So now I own two properties in the interior of Alaska. While this was not what I was originally planning, I think it might be a blessing in disguise. All this money I've spent improving this trail is going to raise the property values of all the properties that need this trail for access. So now I've just doubled my investment. At least that's what I told my wife. Got a friend here who's going to give us a ride. Well for the last week we've been having a neighbor of mine dig and gravel out of this hillside and stockpile it so we can put it on top of that bone rock that we've been laying down. Now this material has a lot of clay in it so it doesn't drain water very well. It can get really muddy and soupy. But the bone rock drains water really well so when you put this on top of the bone rock it keeps the bone rock from moving around and the bone rock helps keep this dry. What do you think? It's good to see isn't it? So much better. We get that clay with rocks in it over the top and this will be a joy to walk on. Well guys I might have done some therapeutic shopping. I bought myself an imported Japanese K truck. This is a four-wheel drive Suzuki Carry and it's been modified for Alaska. This is my Japanese K truck. It's got all-terrain treads on it. Incredible amount of ground clearance. It's got four-wheel drive high and low, off-road lights, and it's got an oil pan and engine block heater. And of course an extra tall cab on the back. And this thing is imported from Japan so uh the steering wheel is on the right hand side. Big man in a little truck. Look Becca I'm a truck guy now! Is it true that women find pickup guys more sexy because... Looking good. Yeah it's lifted too. Oh it's pretty cute. Actually can I sit in it real fast? I haven't been in it yet. It's got loads of headroom but it's a little tight in the legs. Isn't it cute? It's got heat and AC and a radio and it'll keep the bugs out. That's a big one. Don't lose the keys. We're making progress aren't we? Yes I can tell a big big difference and I love the truck. But I think that's all we're going to get done for today. I think we need to go pick up the kids. Oh this is so much smoother than the side-by-side. This thing rides like a dream. There's a grouse right there. We might have to come back and do some hunting. Well check it out guys my road is finished. Look at this nice soft gravel on top of the washed rock. We're gonna go take the truck down the trail and see how it does. Well there we go we've got a road. I'll tell you what the road feels pretty solid. In the end it cost me about $15,000 to build this trail. That's a lot of money but the alternative is buying a fleet of Argos and a brand new Argo will cost you $20,000 to $30,000. But thanks to this road I can now access my property with just about any ATV all year round. One of the first things I want to do is get my electrical system up and running. Something happened to my batteries and they drained so completely that the solar panels can't charge them anymore. So I got this charger and I'm going to hook them up to my batteries and hook it up to the generator and see if we can't jump start our batteries. Well I'm gonna go ahead and let that run for a couple hours and see if it doesn't charge up the batteries. Oh look at all this stuff I brought. I didn't have to carry it on my back. This is so much easier. As soon as the snow starts falling everything out here is going to get buried. So everything that's out in this yard needs to get put away or thrown away. And now that I have the road and the truck I can do that. Well a lot of the stuff I'm throwing away could be pretty useful to some of my neighbors so I called them up and said hey if you want it come and get it. And now that I got my road they can come and get it. Hey Jason. Well thanks man for taking that stuff off my hands. Thank you. All right let's see if this works. Charging this battery for an hour and a half and it still won't even turn on on its own. Something is not right. This one will actually turn on. It's probably going to take about two hours round trip to get one load of garbage to the dump. Two hours later. Let's see if it'll work now. Let's see if we got any power. Well I still got a lot to figure out with that electrical system. One battery seems broken and the other one's charging up. But for now I've got electricity running off the generator so I'm not going to be eating in the dark tonight. That's that's nice. All right we got heat. You know I've got this giant television up here and I have no idea if it works or not. Oh there's a DVD in there. Okay I just noticed that there is a sound bar sitting here against the wall held up with duct tape. I wonder if I can get this speaker working though. I think this is a bluetooth speaker. Okay let's see. Here let's move this over here. Well ha cha we've got an entertainment system. We found this box fan here. Let's see if it works. Sure does. Okay. What I want to do is set this box fan up in the ceiling to push the hot air down. Oh yeah it is just roasting hot up here. Kind of jerry-rigged this box fan to blow straight down. This whole situation is a bit of a hot mess. All right good. Let me show you what we got. The water jug is so dirty. It's basically a battery-powered sprayer with a three and a half gallon tank. You just charge it up pour some water in it and you can take it anywhere. The previous owner's been trying to get running water in here as well. They bought a water tank and a water heater and they had a pressure tank and they'd installed a whole bunch of plumbing. But we still don't have running water in the cabin and the reason is really simple. The cold. This water heater was completely destroyed by ice. So before the heat ever goes off you have to drain your entire water system or you're going to destroy all your plumbing. And that's a major pain in the butt especially for someone like me who's only using this on the weekend. Instead I bought this thing and it's cheaper less hassle and when you need to winterize it you just dump all the water out and spray it till you get air. That battery is fully charged now so let's see if we can run the house off it. Aha. So right now the cabin's electricity is running completely off that one battery. Awesome. That is perfect. All right guys I got a bowl of peanuts. I think it's time to sit down and watch a movie. Tired and I gotta get to bed. I've got a lot of work tomorrow so I'll see you guys in the morning. Well good morning. I really am enjoying being able to flip switches and get heat and light. Well guys we had a little surprise last night. Look at this. When I told you I need to clean up before the snow buries everything I wasn't joking. Oh boy we gotta hurry up and get stuff done today. I think it's time to get to work. Let's see what the battery's doing. That's pretty good. We've only lost about two volts since last night. Battery seems to be handling the load pretty well. My neighbor said he would take all this scrap metal so I'm just gonna make a big pile of it and he's gonna come and get it as he can. Now you see how the previous owners leaned wood up against the skirt of the cabin? There's two reasons for that. In the summer it keeps the porcupines out from underneath your cabin because they like to chew stuff up and they can cause a horrible mess and in the winter time it keeps the wind from blowing underneath your cabin which will like gasoline. It's a bit of a waste but it's two hours and twenty dollars to take that to the landfill. Man look at that. That burn barrel got so hot it melted. It folded right over on itself. I want to make a little spot for me to be able to turn the truck around. I think it's time to go take a load of garbage to the dump. I'm gonna climb up into my big lifted pickup. There's something with me like about pickup man. Oh my poor little UTV. I think what I'm gonna do is tow it out of here once it freezes up but in the meantime I need to kind of get it out of the way and get it covered up so it doesn't get ruined by the snow. That worked better than expected. Yeah this thing's a bit of an eyesore. I think we should move it. I want to check on the battery here. I'm gonna go ahead and charge this sucker up. While that's running I'm gonna get some lunch. I had my hot dog sitting on the front porch to keep them cool. Looks like a little lemming got in there and nibbled the ends of them. We're gonna cut that part off. Little cheddar hot dogs are so good. Oh that was good. Well today's a little bit of a special day. My wife and three boys are coming up to camp with me tonight and if things go well we might do a little bit of hunting too. I got a few things to do to make things a little bit more comfy. Well putting a fan up there has really improved the temperature in this cabin. It's kept the loft from getting too hot and it's kept the floor from getting too cold. But dangling the fan off the edge of the loft isn't a really good long-term solution. The minute I turned on that power saw I just lost electricity to the whole cabin. It's acting like I blew a fuse. That's on. That's on. That's on. That's on. Well that wasn't good. I just saw sparks up there. Yeah that that's not good. When I reset all the breakers in there there was sparks coming out of the ceiling. So yeah I need to do something with that. That's not right. But just one thing at a time I gotta finish this project. Well this is where I'd like the boys to sleep but it's a little bit dark up here so I'm gonna try to make it a little bit more cozy for them. So I found a string of Christmas lights in the shed. They're a little bit melted from the fire but uh let's see if they work. Oh that's nothing to brag about but I think the boys will enjoy it. All right let's cook some dinner. Okay here's our pantry with a bag of lentils. I gotta get going. I gotta be backing the kids at the car. Going my way? Yeah. You want to help me go get water? Yeah let's do it. Let's $0.10 a gallon but it's not enough. Yeah you guys can sit down in the luggage. You guys good back here? Oh here allow me. Oh my. It's a nice ride isn't it? It's better than a four-wheeler. Hey guys come on in. Make sure to put your money boots in the tray okay? You want to see something? See look at that. Yeah I thought it'd be a little bit less spooky to sleep up here if there was Christmas lights. Why don't you guys go and make your beds up okay? Oh Becca did you bring sheets? I did. Nice. Who wants popcorn? Me. All right I'll make some popcorn. Oh shrimp melt man down. Is that gonna do good? Green apple licorice. You guys want some? Yeah. Hey guys you guys can go up there. Ready for a Godzilla movie? You need to use the outhouse? Now that it's getting cold we bring the toilet seat inside. Keep it by the heater and so it's nice and warm then when you sit down on it in the outhouse it doesn't freeze your butt off. You ready to go use the bathroom? Yeah. Let me feel it. Okay everyone lay down. All right guys get to bed okay? Now Becca how do you feel about having 200 pounds of me above you? Well guys it's late and if I don't put this camera up the kids will never get to sleep so I'll see you in the morning. Good morning Becca. Good morning. You sleep warm and comfy? I did. I love this sleeping bag. Well that's because it's only a negative 25 sleeping bag so you know it's not too warm. Who wants chocolate pancakes? Me. All right whoever wants the first pancake. Jacob? Yes. You want it? Come here and get it. We're coming back up. Shall we? Oh here we go. There we go. Got a little bit of metal. Oh you got it. It's finally hunting season. We're going to go try to shoot a grouse. Grouse like to swallow rocks to help them digest their food and in the winter time all the rocks get covered up with snow and ice. So here in the fall they come out to the trails and the stream beds to try to find little pebbles to swallow. So we're going to walk up and down the trail and see if we can't find a grouse. Yeah this is a giant mud hole. You can see people put guardrails down. Yeah you can walk on the guardrails. Yeah. Garbage. Somebody made this out of actual nailed wood. The wood rots away and the nails stay and then you can pop your tires. There are just miles upon miles of trails through these woods and once the snow falls this place becomes a snow machiner's paradise. You can just go anywhere. There's a few cabins on these lakes. Most of those are owned by people who have float planes or they come here in the winter time. A lot of properties in Alaska that are only accessible by float plane or in the winter time. Me and Tommy were walking back and there was a grouse up in the tree and he flew off this direction. We're gonna go see if we can't get a shot at him. All right buddy I think we lost him. All right let's head back to the trail. He was just about eight feet off the ground in one of these spruce trees. It'll... I'm gonna go it's fine. All right. Have a seat babe. It's a good thing Good curry is hard to beat. Love you babe. You want to go play with those? Yay. You move one space forward. Boom boom shakalaka. Nathan you want to go hunting? All right we just scared a grouse. Well I should say he scared the crap out of us and he just flew up into that tree over there. Well we spooked up two grouse but we couldn't get any shots at him. Becca have you had a good time? I have had a good time. It's been very relaxing. I think it's time to pack up. We got to get these kids home. Get up in there yeah. Yeah. You guys ready? I'll tell you what this property is coming along but there's still some things we need to work on. First off that electrical system isn't working right and I was reading on the batteries and it says that you're not supposed to use them if it gets cold. Like you can't charge them below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It's about to get really cold here in Alaska so that ain't gonna fly. I have got to move my entire electrical system including the batteries into the cabin so that I can heat them and keep them warm while we're using them. That's gonna be a big deal. Plus that whole sparks coming out of the roof thing that's not cool. Yeah we got a lot of electrical work to do. All right baby you ready? Let's do this. What do you think Becca? That is a sweet ride. Find me more attractive now I'm a pickup guy? Today's probably one of the last days above freezing so I've got to spray down the truck and spray out the tracks so we don't have frozen mud stuck in the gears all winter. Becca did you have a good time? I had a great time. Well hopefully you guys had a good time too. If you want to see more of these homestead videos check out our off-grid homestead playlist. I'll put a link in the video description below and make sure to click subscribe. I'll see you guys next video. If you like this video don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this and don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. Hit that bell button you'll get notifications. Thanks for watching.