I received a box with a six-month supply of contacts (I wear daily lenses so this is 320 lenses), but when I went to put the away in the bathroom I ran into a problem. When I got home, I opened the box while sitting at the table. However, the first box I found on the table contained light bulbs. The next box contained garbage bags and a third box contained canned lychees. I finally found the contacts on the floor beside the table. However on the floor was also a box of picture frames. By this point you are probably wondering, "what in the world? Why does she have so many boxes and why hasn't she put anything away?" Let me explain. First of all, as my fellow Bush residing friends can attest I can't just go out to the store and buy things. Here in Galena we have two general stores and hardware store. The stores do a really good job trying to keep things stocked, but it's neither easy nor cheap. For examples eggs cost $10 for 18 (I think it's $8 for 12). Milk is somewhere around $10-12 a gallon (I don't drink milk so I don't know) and a loaf of bread is $10. Additionally, one store sells gasoline for $6.95 a gallon while the other is $7.50 per gallon. Thus, while I buy gas and some other things, I try to buy as much as possible when I'm in Anchorage (or if I go to Fairbanks, Fairbanks; it's closer to here) and otherwise I order things.
I order a box of veggies every other week that arrives on Friday or Saturday depending on when the cargo plane gets here (its supposed to be Friday, but it often isn't). When I lived in Kobuk I used Full Circle Farms which is out of Seattle, but now I'm using the Alaska Food Network (AFN) which is based in Anchorage. I like AFN better because not only can I customize the size of each box I can include things like eggs, tortillas, and other things (depending on what they have available that week) as part of my standard order (with Full Circle Farms I could only add it on top of my order, thus adding to the cost). I also like the fact that AFN has (at least this time of year) Alaska Grown produce. I'm still shipping my vegetables a long way, but not all of them are coming from out of state.
Most of the rest of the items I buy I order online. Walmart charges a HUGE shipping fee to Alaska and a lot of staples of Amazon only ship prime pantry which doesn't ship to Alaska. Thus, I order things as a combination of Amazon and Target (who does ship free to Alaska, even rural Alaska). However, each of these choices comes with some trade-offs. Target often has better prices, but they only ship UPS. You might be wondering, "how is that a negative?" The problem is UPS only goes as far as Fairbanks. Once it gets to Fairbanks it is transferred to Ravn (a bush airline) and marked as delivered. However, it's not really delivered. Now it is simply sitting in Fairbanks. Ravn throws everything in a pile and they carry out the UPS delivery at the lowest priority (their own cargo shipping and all postal service shipping are higher priority). This means that your boxes may sit in Fairbanks for weeks. Ravn is also the airline that transports all 260 of our boarding school students so when the students arrived in town a few weeks ago that backed all the cargo up and I have a pile of boxes that say they've been delivered, but as far as I know they are sitting in Fairbanks. I say "as far as I know", because Target doesn't always put a phone number on the box and so I won't necessarily get notification (although last week they tracked me down through the school to let me know). Unfortunately, once the package arrives in Galena, I still don't have it. I have to go to Ravn and pick it up, but Ravn is open 10 am - 4 pm. I work a couple miles away from Ravn and I work 8-4. This means I can only pick packages up on Saturdays and Sundays (if it was really important I sure I could go during my planning, but I only have one every other day).
Thus, if Amazon will ship the item to a P.O. box in Alaska, that's the best choice (some things only ship to physical addresses which means it come UPS), but we're still not home-free. Best case scenario, the post office is open Monday-Friday 2-5 pm. Last week however, the post office was closed Tuesday-Friday. Monday was Labor Day so it was closed Monday as well. By the time it opened on Tuesday I had a HUGE pile of boxes (which I have then been too busy to entirely unpack and put away). Next week the post office will be open on Monday (and I think Friday), but then it will closed until the following Friday. There's a part-time opening at the post office. If anyone wants to move to Galena and work part-time at the post office many of us would be eternally grateful.
Now before you think, "she's crazy for living there," I should say there are a lot of positives including a really great community. On Monday we had an awesome Ag Fair which I hope to write a post about soon and on Sundays we have a potluck lunch after the church service each week. Also people share with each other. Many people have gardens and they share their bounty and others share their fish and hunted meat. Despite all the negative things mentioned it does seem to be a really nice place to live.
