Luke here at the outdoor Boys YouTube channel and I'm building a road through the swamp in the interior of Alaska because I bought an off-grid abandoned Homestead equipment's been breaking down we've been getting stuck in the mud and buildings have been catching on fire but we're not giving up well it's been a couple weeks since.

We've been here at the cabin I've been waiting for good weather to dry up the trail and we finally got it we've got a lot of things to do at the cabin we're gonna need the trail in good shape to do it look at that the Grouse right there there's a whole bunch of them there's dozens of them really delicious.

Game bird called a Spruce Head it's time to check this out is that wolf now look at the size of that  all right guys Welcome to our off-grid Alaskan Homestead we bought this thing about a month ago and the previous owners had walked away abandoning thousands of dollars of equipment.

Including generators and ATVs and that's a real common situation here in Alaska most homesteads are miles away from the road system so when it comes time to sell you can't hire movers or back a truck up foreign we got our first problem the generator won't start because the starter battery.

Is dead the trickle charger that keeps it full wasn't it hooked up properly when we left last time so that's my first mistake so far won't be my last everything looks like it's in pretty good shape  there we go whoa what.

Well I'm no expert but that's bad yeah I'm not sure what to do with that hey Tom once you get that Jack out dang it I think I need a socket wrench set if I'm gonna do this and I don't have one I'll have to put that on my list of things to bring in from town Tommy and Nathan have been working on.

Their own Homestead projects looks like you guys got the playset up and running everything I plan on doing today requires me to haul in supplies with that side by side uh before the UTV broke number one on my agenda was getting this Trail fixed we still got these massive mud holes and every time you drive through these.

Buttholes they just get deeper and deeper I've got to fix these otherwise I won't be able to get supplies in and out of the property whoa you see how deep the mud holes and the ruts are oh all these Trails have the same problem you use them too much and they get worse.

And worse and worse well we need to go head into town I can't get much of anything done until I get that UTV fix Ed all right we made it we're back and this time I brought a lot of tools we are gonna fix this Trail.

Let's go get the sleeping bags all set up get your bed set up take a little break then we're gonna go work foreign I've got so many things to do around here and all of it is made more difficult by the fact that this Trail is so muddy so my number one priority is getting this Trail in better condition the ideal way to fix all these mud holes.

Is to drain the water away and to fill them up with rocks and gravel problem is where do you get the gravel hopefully I can use this excavator to find some gravel all this wet this way this is the problem but as soon as you as you vibrated it turns into a liquid you get driving an.

ATV back and forth on this thing and it just turns into slop I heard a nice crunching sound on that last scoop there's rocks in this now I just need to get this stuff and fill up that this mud is pretty soft I mean you see you put rocks on it and they'll just disappear down in there so.

I'm gonna try to fill up these mud holes full of wood and whatever else I can find and then I'm going to put the good soil on top of it foreign   thank you well this hole gives us a good picture of what we're dealing with and.

You can see we've got about two three feet of this brownish muck and then we've got this gray clay with lots of rocks in it the fact that we got tons of shallow groundwater is a big part of all of our problems now this part of the trail was in pretty good shape before I started digging but just the movement of the machine has caused these pretty deep.

Ruts to appear foreign there you go that's what we're trying to do we fill up the mud holes with wood and then we put good dirt on top of that but until this good dirt dries I really can't run the excavator on it so I think what I need to do is lay down all my wood and go to the very end of the trail.

With the excavator and then work my way back putting good dirt on top of the wood Tommy you hungry yeah we'd like to go make some dinner yeah all right let's do it you hungry you want some mac and cheese yeah all right I made Tang all right there's there's a picture.

Is mac and cheese and spam the best scooping up mac and cheese with a chunk of fried spam we forgot to bring glasses so we're drinking communals paying you guys like that here I'll tell you what guys we got some dessert here are you gonna take these over the sea.

All right this is uh confetti birthday cake cookies here yeah that's I'm sure that's healthy yeah well you got some food in me and I'm feeling like I can tackle this Trail again oh that is filling up quick.

  oh I think I got a lot done today all right guys you want a little midnight snack or early warm milk good weight or in a bad day there you go Nate your bag put up your Pokemon cards all.

Right guys we've got to go to sleep we're gonna put the camera down and I will see you in the morning well good morning it is a beautiful day outside I'm gonna quickly eat some breakfast I'm gonna get out and keep working you guys want some strudel it's not all right let's see if the toaster works.

Oh it's working they say the Alaska state bird is the mosquito they're huge they'll bite you through your clothes spent last night tossing and turning and thinking about how I was gonna get this all done in time we got a lot done yesterday this is Rock Solid.

And I could drive on this just as is and it'd be great let's see what the clay has done it's only been about 12 hours and this Clay is really firmed up a lot I give this several days in the Heat and it'll get pretty nice how much water is poured in there so you can kind of see what I'm doing here on.

The really deep mud holes I'm putting the logs sideways and I'm using really thick logs and that's Bridging the Mud Hole you can see when we get over to this stuff the ground's not half bad so I'm just taking logs and filling up the ruts and I'm covering everything with Limbs and branches and because I'm laying it directly onto the soil I can.

Use smaller stuff and get away with it you know and so far it seems to be working okay but I'm worried about running out of time so instead of working linearly I'm going to hit the biggest mud holes first and we're going to work from there well we may be short on time but we're not short on Deadwood look at all this dead spruce.

 all right foreign  got a fair amount done but I'm hungry I'm gonna go grab some lunch what's going on in here oh look at oh look the boys have been picking some blueberries you want me to.

Protect these from Nathan yes I'm gonna put them somewhere Nathan can't get them oh no no no I'm sure he's just a ball of sweat here in Alaska we call this make it a Corduroy Road Tommy you've been blueberry picking yep yeah an hour worth of blueberry picking not bad Tom ah.

This is the magic tool for chainsaws that's the very last of my gasoline  but it is dinner time oh that is not good all the water we have left is in this tea kettle oh well we're almost out of water we're almost out of Chainsaw fuel we're low on.

Snacks and food but the most frustrating part is we brought it all it's all sitting at the car we just couldn't fit it all on the excavator I really got to go fix the tracks on that side by side oh I'm working on this back wheel and I look up and I noticed the front wheels already derailed.

Look at that there's a tensioning nut on these tracks that keeps the track tight keeps it from falling off and it's set to the wrong setting and it's rusted that way and I can't get it to turn this is a massive pain in the butt I think we should just slap the tires on them what do you think yep Maybe.

There you go stop it  as soon as I let off the starter it dies this thing is being so frustrating you need to put it in drive and spin the wheels forward in order to take the lugs off so we can't get the other tracks off and we couldn't drive it even if we did we need to clean this mess up.

Well the boys are exhausted and we've got way too much stuff we need to carry back to do it by hand so we're going to take the excavator come on hop aboard boy  oh look at this big jug of water doesn't that make you happy yeah it's basically foreign.

Guys I'll see I'm gonna go I'm gonna go do a little more work love you bud  oh man I built a lot of road today but I've got to test it out I'll tell you that corduroy works really well this part is Rock Solid no complaints.

There but this this is a bit sketchy you're gonna see right about here I got off track and just started digging a huge rut you can literally see the water starting to fill up in the ruts it's like driving on a giant sponge well it's pretty late I think I need to get to bed.

Ah good morning oh I'm a bit stiff I brought some of the supplies from the cars silverware Oreos and a cutting board which I need to clean off  oh the generator just died and our lights went out that tells me the.

Generator's out of gas  you guys like that yeah wow look I got my hand back oh crap that's on fire oh bring the fire receiver.

Thank you   that's it for the fire receiversary no no that's fine good job getting the fire extinguisher Tom I was making pancakes I heard a little bit of a popping crashing sound thought.

A bear might be messing around with our stuff so I poked my head out of the cabin and I see smoke just coming out of the generator cabin I'm like oh crap well I'm guessing that's the real reason the electricity turned off oh hold on I got oh my God okay sir oh I burned my pancakes so I think it's pretty obvious what.

Happened the previous owners had scooted the generator up against the wall so that the exhaust would blow out of a hole in the wall the exhaust overheated the wood caught it on fire that caught the generator on fire and that fire had been burning in there for probably 15 minutes before I came out here and noticed luckily the door was all closed.

And so the oxygen couldn't let the fire spread very fast niche all over here look at that oh look at this melted the light bulb here we gotta check for Embers oh this stuff's pretty hot guys get out of here there's a lot of.

Toxic smoke so Smoky and hot up in the attic I can't even breathe up there the fire been going long enough to burn that stud into that's crazy foreign there's still some fire in there dang it yeah look at that still got Embers this thing could reignite.

We got to keep our eye on this for the next couple hours make sure there's no Embers burning we don't want to fire reigniting I've only got about maybe a gallon and a half two gallons of water left so we're in no position to fight another fire oh yeah that's a hot mess no pun intended.

I need breakfast yeah that's there you go that's a pancake for a man that just put out a fire oh it's a lot easier to think about this with a full belly here why don't you guys go in there and pull out anything that's burned pull it.

Out and make a big pile out here okay oh yeah this Cherry's got a little melted all right take that uh melted this bin here watch out his Styrofoam insulation look it's all melted keep an eye out for any smoldering if you see any smoke or smoldering you let me know okay on the.

Upside the boys are very entertained just tore a nice hole in my jeans turning out to be one of those days all right we're gonna hop in the excavator we're gonna throw some mud down thank you I've dug about five and a half feet down and there's no clay no gravel just more more loam there's this thin layer of.

Sand that I thought was gonna help me out but it's only about two three inches thick and I can't really dig down any further because this big pile alone is like jelly every time I dig down the whole thing just Jiggles I'm gonna have to find a different way to get some clean gravel in here gotta go return the excavator better.

Load it up with any supplies we need to take back to the car oh hey look we got some guests hi Mom I do hi did you bring us some food did I brought you food and water Melissa did you want to go see the cabin ET I've been using this opportunity to give Becca a tour of the property and to.

Carry 50 pounds of canned goods on my back oh God to get that side by side fixed you can kind of feel that ground how spongy it is faint odor of burn generator on the Wind how expensive yeah that's not that's not cheap I forgot we had like a whole bunch of.

Propane bottles and gas cans in here glad those propane bottles didn't go up hey you want to see the the part that isn't burned come on in all right I'm sorry the lights aren't on we're having electrical issues at the moment so this is the The Loft up there oh there you go babe.

That's what I blew all of our money on  you know I told you this was a good deal because it comes with a working UTV and a generator well thanks for coming out and visiting I needed a little cheer up Tommy you going with Mom yeah me too you catch one building on fire and they abandon you.

Like that  thanks  oh yeah yeah got about 50 60 pounds of canned goods I brought back need more canned spam we were running low.

I got some mixing bowls and a measuring cup and some other odds and ends we were missing good you know I was thinking about it the generator is gone but why is the solar power not working solar panels look fine let's go see if we can figure it out.

It was so hot in here it could have easily fried something in the electronics batteries are full but the inverter says error well maybe it's just the fact that my electrical system burst into flames today but I feel like this is something I shouldn't handle on my own I'm gonna get a professional well it's times like.

This you just need to focus and pick some tasks that you can accomplish just to keep your sanity you know I don't think that hole is that bad if I just hit the hardware store and grab some tools I think I can fix that pretty easily I think next on my agenda is finishing this Trail I'm like 85 percent done.

 well I got a lot done but I need to head into town I've got tools and equipment I need and frankly I need a shower so it looks like I'm gonna be coming back out here tomorrow probably all right here is perfect it's important to know when I'm in over.

My head so I called the guys from all off grid and bless their hearts they came out here on a Saturday in 4x4 down here to help me out and while we're at it we're going to replace the golf cart batteries with these two lithium batteries so with just two of these I'm gonna triple our battery storage in about half the space additionally these.

Are Plug and Play So if I want I can take this out with me charge it up at home and bring it out and I can have several days worth of power for each battery oh yeah oh wow yeah that voids the warranty they're like how long would it take a generator like.

This to charge those batteries up real three hours three hours well all those guys work on that I am gonna try to see what I can do about this somebody left the ignition in the on position yeah oh the battery's completely dead we'll add that to the list of problems.

We might have power let's check this out oh look at that you don't appreciate that until it's gone do you we got electricity yeah thank you very much for coming out I appreciate it I appreciate it to you man bye-bye thank you well that is great that we finally got electricity again it's time to make some.

Lunch here uh oh that sputtering noise means the propane's almost out well it was six long hard days working on this property and I feel like the list of things I need to do is longer not shorter but I still believe if I can get this Trail in good condition every.

Other project will be so much easier but for now I'm gonna have to cut this video off and if you guys want to see what happens next with this off-grid cabin project make sure to click subscribe to the outdoor Boys YouTube channel and I'll see you guys at our 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 and you'll get notifications thanks for watching