LOL ever heard of this really common stuff you buy at any hardware store or even probably Walmart called RidX that you flush down the toilet once a year? Gotta religiously use that but have never had septic issues EXCEPT when just prior to moving in to the unlived-in-for-8-years house the leech field (which ran along the "driveway") got run over a few dozen times by a 20 ton excavator carrying bundles of lumber for the neighbors' house. THEN, months later, when we/he actually got around trying to fix the leaking leech field (snow would melt in that spot really fast) and rerouting it across the lawn he dug up the phone line and water main. How about coming home in a flustered mood, discovering your driveway is all torn up, then going in the house to rinse out an ice cream container then turning the faucet knob and getting "gurgle" and that's it. We taped the phone line back together (with indoor phone cord too) and it worked fine for a couple months until it finally shorted out, then were without a phone for two months. (I got really good at IM during that time)
As for trash disposal...hate to admit it, but I have to burn my trash. I hate doing it though, especially plastic but you gotta do what you gotta do LOL. We recycle aluminum soda/beer cans here and send them in to Sitka. Used to do tin and some plastic but lack of interest stopped that. I do save up stuff like spent F40 lamps to send in eventually though.
My bathroom has two 3X3-ish windows (single pane old wood ones with the glass that "rattles") but most of the light is blocked out by a porch roof...also I should add the bathroom windows are right next to the front door and aren't privacy glass! So we put some clear plastic up over the closest one for some privacy.
I think property taxes take care of the "vacant" issue since a law like that would be ridiculous IMO.
That, and one of our docks is literally falling apart. I'd like to see city power but it's not likely. From what I'm told (being a relatively new resident at only going on 6 years full time but having visited before) feaseability studies have been done and the most likely alternative is a huge diesel generator powering the entire town. Not really feaseable given the amount it would take to install, fuel, and maintain such a system, and how few households would hook on to it (Although I sure would!). Also because of that KWH rate would probably be high...I know a similar but slightly larger community that used to have such a system (It's now on the grid but it wasn't yet in April 2014 when I went there) and some people I know lived in an all-electic mobile home (electric heat, hot water, range, clothes dryer, you name it) and their bill was 400-some dollars a month...ridiculous!
I don't mind making my own power and would like to pursue alternative energy (solar, wind, and hydro) but if the (even diesel powered) grid came through I'd hook right on unless I had such a system that had paid for itself and was totally "free", then I might opt to stay off.
A lot of people here during that 70s-80s homesteading era lived without power for the most part...although in the 80s personal generators (noisy, cantankerous gasoline ones, this was before the days of the nice little quiet Hondas) started to become popular and it got pretty noisy at night. There was talk of a noise ordinace regarding shutting off generators before a certain time at night but it never happened. My neighbor's is pretty quiet, and I've lived with worse anyway, like right above the high school ball/band field with the sounds of broadies being spun out in the parking lot.
My parents met each other in California when my dad was (tuna?) fishing down there but he was a mainly Alaska resident. But they'd fish up here in the summers, hence being up here. They never married so didn't divorce but their relationship became much more distant over time, hence my double-siting all these years. My mom lived in Atascadero, and I spent most of my life to date in that house there, it was a home to me until only last year after she passed away and we sold it. I first came to Port Alexander in 1999, as a toddler, and learned to walk here. The house we rented...it's still in existence but is abandoned now. My dad later had a house in Sitka for a few years (2003 to 2008 or so) but ended up selling it and moving onto his boat thinking he'd retire, fish a bit in the summers and spend the rest of the year down in Atascadero with me and in Mexico or something LOL. (I might also add when I was really young my dad had a ranch in New Mexico). Anyhow after the house in Sitka sold it ended up becoming a meth lab or crack house or whatever...and ended up being gutted and torn down. There's a big new house on the lot, but it's not where I have childhood memories, that's for sure!
When I moved up here full time in 2008 we stayed in a friend's house here in Port Alexander for two winters while we bought and fixed up the house we're currently in. It was a huge upgrade getting our own place though, funky as it is, being a rural homestead house built by hippies LOL. So yeah I've been around...but had one house for my entire life at the same time up until last year.
Yeah I'm considering a road trip or something, though I only had that idea since the army truck interest developed a couple months ago. It would be a nice change of scenery/pace from my current lifestyle of never leaving the same couple square miles very often during the winters. (Though in the summers I'm in and out quite often).
I like to travel, but it can get tiring for sure. I like taking slower trips though, even getting to Sitka for something I'd take an 8+ hour boat trip over a floatplane...I hate small planes anyway. One of the experiences I have many people don't is I've actually "driven" the (now out of commission) mailboat for this place. Another one is having the high speed state ferry slow down for me going into Sitka. (But that's another story)