(NOTE: Mike Eberlein once owned four restaurants in Park City, Utah. He moved to Gwinnett in 2022 to be near his older daughter and her family in Berkeley Lake. He lives with a younger daughter in Peachtree Corners.—eeb)
By Mike Eberlein
PEACHTREE CORNERS, Ga. | For many vacationers, half the cost of travel is spent on lodging. Rates vary as greatly as the accommodations: motels from $69 a night to hotels at $3,000.
Here’s a solution: Pet- and house-sitting.
Last year my daughter, Ashley, and I travelled to Soldatna, Alaska, and spent an enjoyable and very economical 40 days in a three-bedroom home, with a large screen TV, a kitchen full of food, a two-car garage and three dogs — very big, warm, super-friendly dogs, Janey, Juneau and Jenny.
Our only costs: round trip flights, entertainment and tours, eating out and such. No lodging costs!
We arrived in Anchorage on June 4, 2024, and immediately boarded a high wing, single engine plane for the 30-minute flight to Kenai City. It saved a four-hour road trip and we also saw the “bluest river” I had ever seen – the Kenai. The temperature was in the 70s almost daily…but the cool breezes warned that winter was still king there.
Mountain peaks on either side of the river wore remnants of snow. We watched eagles soaring over the river – fishing. It was, as advertised, simply magnificent.
Ready to get started on your home-sitting? Visit the TrustedHouseSitters site on the internet. There you will find house- and pet-sitting requests from owners all over the world. It costs just over $100 to join, but that is less than most one-night accommodations. The membership is good for a year. Yes, there are openings available in Georgia.
The owners want to know about their potential sitters and vice versa. Video interviews are widely used and may be revealing. There is also a spot for owner and sitter reviews.
Our vacation was made even better by the host family’s generosity: In addition to their house and two cars at our disposal, there was salmon and trout fishing gear, a two-person kayak, plus a moose family which visited almost within touching distance. The cost for all these extras— nothing—they were included.
We tended the dogs while the owners vacationed in Europe, falling in love with the dogs. They were already wearing their heavy winter coats and greeted us every day with wagging tails and huge smiles.
We figured the average daily cost of these extras (not including the dog smiles or moose) would have been in the $300 to $400 range.
One special day, we stuffed ‘our’ kayak in the van and met a retired Soldatna couple enjoying the weekend at one of the myriad Alaskan lakes. They invited us to visit their favorite spring-fed lake. We kayaked with them, then grilled a lakeside lunch.
Next, to our delight, Dan, a retired bush pilot, took us up in his tiny, single engine Cessna for a close-up tour of the area including nearby glaciers. “Wow” was all we could say after offering our thanks. Dan wouldn’t even accept gas money.
Interested in sitting? Choices are almost unlimited. The website has literally thousands of people looking for sitters. Choose a time and place matching your availability.
My daughter enjoyed the Alaska adventure so much that she then spent two months sitting in Ireland. She watched a variety of pets while enjoying the extended trip and the free lodging. She was able to consecutively schedule five or six sittings, in different parts of the Emerald Isle, by selecting time, place, animals and accommodations to her liking.
The dollars saved by home- and pet -sitting almost guarantee a happy trip.
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