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NARRATOR: Alaska.
It's been called the last frontier --
a place where only the most adventurous come
to live on the edge in a vast, unspoiled wilderness.
***: Whoo! This is what I'm talking about right here!
This is awesome!
NARRATOR: So you think you want to live in Alaska...
Oh, my, goodness.
...where your nearest neighbor
might be waking from hibernation...
MAN: Wow!
...where the real amenities are outside...
And on the right here, you have your second bathroom.
WOMAN: With a million-dollar view.
...and the views change 'round the clock...
and where every day is an adventure.
MAN: Fish on!
The only thing you can expect is the unexpected
if you plan on "Living Alaska."
Lookit here -- Alaska!
-- Captions by VITAC --
NATHAN: It's Alaska.
I am so excited to live here.
After several years in several different cities,
Monica, Nathan, and their dog, Zella,
are ready to stop the madness, start a family,
and begin living their dream.
And for these avid outdoorsmen,
that means moving to Alaska.
I grew up coming up to Alaska with my grandma,
hunting and fishing,
so it's the perfect opportunity to get back to that,
because I haven't been able to
the last few places that we've lived.
And for Nathan,
there's nothing he loves more than fishing.
I think we're looking forward to going out on the boat
and catching some deep-sea fish --
some halibut, some rockfish, and lingcod
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I mean, you can't live in Alaska and not be on a boat.
Yeah, we need a boat.
Yeah, we need some boat friends.
Yes. We need boat friends.
We could do this every weekend.
But the last few weekends of their lives
have been spent in St. Paul, Minnesota.
NATHAN: I think we're both excited to move to Alaska.
We're ready to move on, and when Alaska
became an opportunity, we jumped at it right away.
You look at a map, and you don't realize how far up it is.
And it just seems --
You know, it's like, "Wow, Alaska."
We've been in Minnesota for nine months
and haven't had a single visitor.
Just talking to our family and friends
and saying, "Oh, we're moving to Alaska,"
they pretty much have already bought plane tickets.
We had to figure out how to get our dog up here via plane
because driving here was just not an option.
The moving arrangements with my company were that
they weren't going to move a lot of our stuff for us.
They gave us a 1,000-pound limit on what we could bring.
Picked out the 1,000 pounds of stuff we liked the best
[ Chuckles ] Yeah.
And their Alaska destination?
Beautiful Eagle River.
Eagle River is beautiful.
When you picture Alaska,
it's exactly what we were looking for.
15 minutes north of Anchorage,
gateway to the 500,000-acre Chugach State Park.
One of the things about living in Eagle River
is you've got some of the best neighbors in the world --
bear, moose, mountain goat.
It's a wild place.
NARRATOR: You get all this for free.
You've just got to pay a higher price to get a home here.
The average for Eagle River --
$340,000.
STEPHEN: One of the things that surprises people the most
in real estate in Alaska is how much everything costs.
It's, you know -- It's relatively expensive
compared to many places in the states.
Alaska has a very unique economy
in that we're self-sufficient in many ways.
NARRATOR: Another reason homes cost more --
Houses need to be built strong in Alaska
due to the intense seismic activity.
STEPHEN: Anchorage is surrounded by ocean,
military base, and national park.
So we really can't grow much more.
People are moving out to Eagle River.
And I like Eagle River because
you get the small-town feel a little more,
but you're only 15 minutes from downtown Anchorage.
NATHAN: This is cool.
Yeah, we should try and find something to buy for our new house.
We need to find something Alaska, though.
NARRATOR: Real estate agent Stephen Olendorff
is a third-generation Alaskan,
and he knows Eagle River inside out.
What better place to meet than the state fair?
All kinds of stuff going on today.
There's a native arts and dance festival.
There's phenomenal food.
So, I want to talk to you a little bit about
what you guys are looking for in your house.
We're looking for a three-to-four-bedroom place
that's got a good-sized yard and has a little bit of room
in between us and our neighbors.
We don't want to be right on top of anybody.
We really kind of want to go for a house
that's got kind of the Alaskan feel.
Not necessarily a cookie-cutter place.
No cookie-cutter. That's not why you moved up here, right?
MONICA: But family-friendly, not a fixer-upper.
Something we can just move right in.
Price range, what are we thinking? What do we want to stay around?
I'm thinking around the $400,000 mark.
A little bit below or above would be okay,
Okay, very nice.
NARRATOR: Stephen's got a great place in mind
in the Chugach Mountains,
15 minutes outside of Eagle River.
About six miles. Yep.
Is this the driveway?
Little bit more of a driveway than I was expecting,
but it's beautiful.
So, this is 2,600 square feet.
It's $450,000.
It has a mother-in-law apartment above the garage.
It's sitting on 2.1 acres.
And it backs to a mountainside,
so no one's going to be building above you,
which is kind of cool.
So, you want to start in the main house?
Let's check it out.
NARRATOR: The highland house is priced at $450,000.
All right, go on in.
Thank you.
Oh. [ Chuckles ]
NATHAN: Washer and dryer.
Yeah, washer and dryer... in the entryway.
NARRATOR: It might seem out of place, but it's not unusual
for entryways in Alaska to be mud rooms,
where you can drop your dirty clothes right in the washer.
Okay.
STEPHEN: Let's go check out the kitchen.
MONICA: I kind of expected the kitchen to be...
Yeah.
It is beautiful.
You can see all the way across the valley.
Yep. That's Eagle River over there.
This is right in the middle of bear and moose habitat.
I would not be surprised if you see bear and moose
on a regular basis up here.
I'm deathly afraid of bears.
There could be bear in your backyard.
[ Laughs ]
No matter where we're living in Alaska,
there's going to be the possibility
that a bear could come right in our backyard.
Even hunting in Idaho,
I never wanted to run across a bear.
I just -- They're terrifying.
Bear mace while walking the dog.
[ Laughs ]
I don't know if you can -- Can you kill a bear?
I don't know. Yeah. Well, I know.
Bear preparedness.
They do.
NARRATOR: Monica's fears are well-founded.
There are more than 100,000 bears in the state,
so it's home to some of the best bear hunting in the world.
Alisha Rosenbruch-Decker is a professional bear guide.
In all honesty, these black bear get as large as grizzlies.
It's amazing to see how huge they get.
Guiding is kind of an interesting occupation.
It's a neat way for me to be able to share my passion
for the animals, for the habitat that they're in,
and for this great, wild place that I call home,
and to show them a little bit about what remains
that is so far-gone in other parts of the world.
MONICA: Wow, look at that view.
NATHAN: Yeah, it's an amazing view.
Move to Alaska, this is what you want to see.
I think it's the best part about this room.
That valley goes back 20 miles.
You can't see a single neighbor. I love that.
STEPHEN: This is the main living room in the house.
Keep in mind, part of the reason this is $450,000 is
there's a mother-in-law bonus room above the garage
that's pretty impressive, as well.
I think that it's important that we have another living space,
another playroom, so that when we have kids,
you know, we have more room to grow.
And I'm not going to send them to the garage to play.
Might be nice to get them out of the house.
[ Chuckles ] Stop it.
NARRATOR: Upstairs, there are two bedrooms
plus the master.
Wow.
I love the light.
Yeah, the skylight's great.
I mean, I like the skylights,
but I wouldn't like them at 2:00 in the morning.
NARRATOR: In June and July, you're looking at
20-plus hours of sunshine a day.
We have to have black-out shades.
It's definitely not ideal. It's pretty pretty small.
We'd like to have a lot of room for a big bed,
and just be able to spread out in here, so.
We've just had a lot of small master bedrooms.
It would be nice to actually upgrade
I understand that.
Yeah, and this is not it. [ Chuckles ]
NATHAN: So, the garage is not attached to the house,
which is not the best thing for the wintertime.
That's true. It's going to be a walk.
Have to keep this shoveled constantly.
MONICA: I'm a little worried -- It's kind of far,
and I just can't imagine having to
come back and forth to the car, groceries.
Bonus room.
Wow, look how big this is.
I know. It's huge.
Oh, my goodness.
NATHAN: You could have a lot of fun in here.
Card table, pool table, something.
I'd never see you again if you turned this into a game room.
Oh, yeah, right.
It's mother-in-law.
So, it does have a bedroom, but it is a loft.
So, it's really short ceilings, you know.
I don't know. It's dated.
We'd have to redo pretty much everything.
Carpets, walls, everything. So it'd be a lot of work.
We're not fix-it people. [ Laughs ]
The space is -- It's fun.
It just is not useful for us.
And given that there's six months of winter here,
I can't imagine trekking back and forth to do that.
Coming up to the house, it's stunning.
And, you know, being able to show that
and say this is where we live in Alaska,
it would be amazing.
It's just right off the main road, huh?
Oh, wow.
Ooh, hot tub.
MONICA: We really want a big, open kitchen,
and that's a galley kitchen.
This is a lot smaller.
[ Gasps ] Yes!
Okay, ready?
That's pretty good.
NATHAN: Yeah.
You know, I think there's a lot of things that are unique to Alaska
that we want to try and experience
and enjoy while we're here.
I'm excited to live here. It's beautiful.
NARRATOR: Monica and Nathan sold almost everything they own,
are parking up the rest,
and moving from Minnesota to Alaska.
We're looking forward to doing a lot of things in Alaska --
fishing and hunting and hiking.
I'm excited about the skiing.
Alyeska is supposed to be a great ski mountain.
Now, the last frontier is their new frontier.
Wow, Alaska.
And realtor Stephen Olendorff
is excited to show Nathan and Monica
a place he thinks has real potential
in the heart of Eagle River,
known for some of the best salmon fishing in Alaska,
where you can catch king, sockeye, and coho.
MONICA: It's really, really beautiful here.
On a sunny day,
I bet it's just amazing.
So, it's just right off the main road, huh?
Right off the main road, yeah.
I wonder if the car traffic noise is --
Is there a noise problem?
Well, look at all these trees around you.
That's what's going to help your cause out.
But we'll just see.
Definitely not the log cabin that people picture
when you think about a house in Alaska.
It's more modern, but it's nice.
It's got enough woods right around it
that it makes it feel a little bit more like
the Alaska experience that we're looking for.
It's a little bit smaller than I expected for a family room.
Well, it's a little small. It'd be hard to have a big TV in here.
There's a bonus room upstairs that's perfect for movie-type things.
So I'm excited to show you guys that too.
NATHAN: This is a big, open space. I like this.
I was nervous downstairs that there wasn't other space.
Exactly. And this is a little loft.
Yeah. It's great.
You're getting a deck, you're getting a fireplace in here,
which is pretty unique for a bonus room.
But it does have the wood-burning fireplace,
which is going to be so amazing this winter.
Yeah, I could definitely see myself hanging out in here,
watching football on cold winter nights.
Oh, definitely. It's a room that could have multiple uses, too.
It doesn't have to be a TV room.
This can be a play area.
That's going to be important.
Hopefully, sooner than later, but...
It's nice.
You've got the bathroom on the right.
Oh, yeah. That's nice.
So, it's its own dedicated master bath.
It's a good size. This room is nice and big.
It is.
I don't understand why the walls are slanted like this.
Yeah, that's kind of weird.
This is an 8/12- or 9/12-pitch roof, which is extremely steep.
It helps with snow load, and you see
a lot of A-frame cabins and houses in Alaska like that,
so that you don't have to get up and shovel your roof.
The flip side is in order to have that livable space on the second floor,
you're going to need to have some awkward-shaped walls.
Part of living in Alaska, if you want to
not have to get up on the roof,
you have to engineer things a little differently.
Are you going to shovel the roof if we need to?
All right. [ Laughs ]
You'll have your hands full with the driveway.
No kidding.
I am worried that the rooms --
The other rooms are downstairs.
And as far as having a baby and the nursery --
Yeah. Right.
So it'd have to be separate, pretty much.
Right. So, we'd have to go back and forth downstairs, upstairs.
And maybe get creative with the bonus room over there,
for a while, with a nursery, potentially.
Maybe we could use that extra space in the back
for something like that.
Yeah.
I was kind of hoping for an open kitchen,
as opposed to the galley style.
This is just really small.
Well, look out the window, though.
It's nice when you're doing your dishes, looking at that.
Yeah, I could get used to that.
That's amazing.
I can't see a single neighbor.
It's that Alaskan feel we're looking for, right?
It's exactly what I thought of when I thought of Alaska.
Wow.
Ooh, hot tub.
Yeah.
That's how you stay warm up here.
There is not a fence.
It'd be nice to have a fence for the dog.
In Alaska, there's two options -- you can just do a traditional fence,
or you can do an invisible fence if your only purpose
is just to keep your dog in the yard.
That's a good idea.
It'd be nice to have a real fence
to keep the animals out, though, too.
That's true, too.
I keep forgetting about the bears. Yeah.
You don't want to grill and have brownie bear
come rolling in for a salmon burger.
[ Laughs ] That would be awful.
Yeah, I think we'd have to put in a fence.
Yeah, I like the yard.
Fire pit.
I'm just -- I don't know, I'm worried that --
I mean, the upstairs is the master bedroom.
And then, downstairs,
we have both the other bedrooms,
so the nursery would be downstairs.
MONICA: Kitchen's small -- We really want a big, open kitchen,
and that's a galley kitchen.
Yeah. It's done. It's finished.
Has lots of good living space.
It's move-in ready.
NARRATOR: The answer after this.
NARRATOR: The answer...
Though at one point in the 1960s,
there were fewer than 500 nesting pairs,
the bald eagle has made an outstanding recovery
and was removed from the endangered list in 2007.
There are between 80,000 and 100,000 bald eagles
in North America,
and half of those are in Alaska.
Oh, man, look at that.
It's Alaska.
I'm so excited to live here.
And Eagle River, Alaska, is where Monica and Nathan
and their dog, Zella, will soon call home.
We're both excited to move to Alaska.
We'd like to have a place that's
just close to all the things we like to do outside,
so camping and fishing and hiking and that kind of thing.
So Eagle River is definitely appealing to us in that sense.
They've been looking in Eagle River for weeks
and still are not happy with what they've found.
So Stephen is showing them a big property
in south Anchorage -- a bit of a hike from Eagle River,
but a lot closer to Nathan's new job.
STEPHEN: So, this place was built in '84.
It's 2,850 square feet.
Sitting on over an acre.
It's got a detached shop, couple outbuildings.
It's a really big lot.
This is $489,000.
MONICA: Okay.
It's on the top-end, but, in Anchorage,
to get that acre, that seclusion with trees,
it's going to cost a little bit more.
I didn't know we could get this in Anchorage.
This is awesome.
Big lot. It's an older neighborhood.
It feels like we're out in the wild,
but we're only 15 minutes from downtown.
I talked to the homeowner,
and when the leaves are off the trees,
you can actually see the inlet and sunsets from the deck,
That would be awesome.
Yeah, this deck is amazing.
[ Laughing ] God, it's really windy.
That's what you get with lower Hillside Anchorage.
The wind blows off the big mountains,
and you'll get windstorms from time to time.
MONICA: Oh, my gosh.
It's really nice. Bunch of trees.
Yeah.
I don't even think you'd need a fence here.
Well, there is a fence, just so you know.
Over here, there's a special dog fence.
Yeah, that is nice, isn't it?
It feels Alaska to me, you know?
Instead of being in a neighborhood.
This is really nice, Stephen.
Tall ceilings.
STEPHEN: All tongue-and-groove ceilings.
The windows are great.
We haven't seen anything like this yet.
Wood stove.
There's also another wood stove downstairs.
So, they rely on wood heat.
It's a way to offset heating costs
and get one room really warm
and not have to adjust your thermostat.
It feels more like a cabin in here.
It does. Just a big cabin. Exactly.
It flows right over there into the dining area.
It's nice. It's updated.
Yeah.
This is a lot smaller
than I would expect for this price range.
With this price range, you're paying for the lot.
You're paying for some other things.
It's updated a little, but you're right, it is pretty small.
NARRATOR: Upstairs, there's a full-size loft.
Oh, I really like this area.
Unexpected. I didn't know this would be here.
I actually think it would be really great as a playroom.
I think you could use this for several different things.
The ceilings are a little low.
It's only a problem for you, because you're tall, though,
so I think it's okay.
Stephen, is this the master bedroom?
This is the master bedroom. Yes.
Oh, that is a problem.
This is so small.
And it is not a master bedroom at all.
NATHAN: The price is pretty high.
It's definitely above what we were looking to spend,
but there's some trade-offs here
with how big the land is.
I hope we could talk them down a little bit in the price.
Maybe they could throw the boat in.
Oh, yeah.
[ Chuckles ]
NARRATOR: After weeks of looking,
Stephen's wondering which house will hit the mark.
I could get used to it.
We want to write an offer today.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it is.
NARRATOR: Nathan and Monica are moving to Alaska
to live their dream and fish their hearts out.
NATHAN: Yeah.
It's beautiful.
Yeah.
It's just so pretty.
So, what do you think?
Well, I really liked
a few things about the highland house.
It had a big plot of land.
But it was just really far out of town
and needed a lot of updates.
The views were stunning, but...
the work that needs to be done --
It's too much. Yep.
The hillside house was so beautiful.
And I really love that it was in Anchorage.
I didn't think we could get land there.
It had a great deck, huge yard,
but you know, all the bedrooms were really small.
And the kitchen.
That master bedroom -- I just was shocked.
Yeah, for almost half a million dollars,
you really expect some of those things to be better.
What did you think about the Eagle River house?
I liked the Eagle River house a lot.
It had great bedrooms, good living spaces.
I really liked that upstairs bedroom and big yard.
I loved the master bedroom.
That was what a master bedroom should look like.
And it was a good, easy commute in and out of Anchorage. It was nice.
You guys want to look at some more houses,
or have you made a decision?
I think we've decided.
Okay, talk to me.
We decided on the Eagle River house.
Yeah. It's going to be so awesome.
We want to write an offer today.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it is.
NATHAN: I think the Eagle River house is perfect.
It's got everything we're looking for.
Love. It's not even a like. Love it.
We're coming with practically nothing.
We're going to ask for that upstairs couch,
the TV, and some of the bedroom furniture,
because we heard that the homeowners
are moving out of state.
Yeah, getting stuff in and out of Alaska can be really expensive,
so I think any time that you can just leave things here,
it works well for the people coming in and for the people going out.
I think living here is going to be just amazing.
Everywhere you go, there's an awesome view of the mountains and ocean.
I'm excited for this winter. We're going to have so much stuff to do.
Oh, yeah. There'll be tons of stuff to do.
This is what living in Alaska is supposed to be like.
This is going to be a great experience, wife.
Yeah.
I don't think I'll ever want to leave.
Yeah, it's going to be tough.
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.