The Outer Point and Rainforest Trail

A couple weeks ago, Grandma and I took our digital cameras for a walk around the Outer Point loop. We had a very enjoyable time wandering down the trail at a very slow pace and taking pictures of everything and anything that caught our interest. The sun blessed us with good lighting for picture taking, and we saw Outer Point at its best.

The bright yellow leaves of the Devil's Club are impossible to miss in the lush green of the Juneau rain forest. Though the leaves now droop and fall with the onset of winter, the vicious stalks stand tall, undaunted, and unrelenting to the quiet whisperings of approaching winter. One could almost mistake the proud branches for an unwavering hero, standing firm in the face of an unbeatable foe. That is until, of course, one gets too close and becomes aware of the long, thin, hard, barbed spikes that thickly cover the tall stalks. No, the Devil's Club will stand through the winter, nasty villain that it is, ready to send out new leaves next spring, and winter will find itself unvictorious.

This spruce grouse wandered up onto the trail right in front of us and stood still as stone for about a minute while we snapped pictures like unusually reverent paparazzi before it broke from its pose and leisurely wandered off.

After a lovely wander through the temperate rain forest we emerged from the tall spruce and hemlock trees to a pebble strewn beach (alright, I'll admit it, there might have been quite a few largish rocks thrown in there with those pebbles). The sun was out and the sky was clear - which is a strange sight in Juneau - only because the wind was blowing, keeping the clouds away and making waves break on the beach of the well protected channel.

This adorable little porcupine sat quite still for several minutes allowing for many adorable pictures. Perhaps it felt the need to upstage the grouse; if you ask me there's no competition - let's see...thoroughly cute mammal (as long as you don't try to pet it *ouch*) or funny looking bird?

Here we have the sun spitting its rays down on the lovely high tide line of seaweed.

It was a pretty low tide that day and we wandered down t0 peer into the tide pools. There were a lot of neat little anemones in fun colors. I liked this one's zebra outfit. Most of the anemones were about 1-2 inches in diameter.

Other exciting sea life we saw were the barnacles and blue muscles, which absolutely covered the rocks in places.

Here are some colorful beach pebbles.

That's Shaman Island framed there in the trees. And no, I don't know why it's called that.

After making our way up off the beach and through some trees we came out onto the Muskeg (bog). The trees are all stumpy because of something to do with clay and moisture and... stuff. The ground is covered in a thick carpet of moss in several shades from deep green to bright red to dull brown.

The walk through the bog is short and we were soon on our way back into the forest.

The three distinct habitats make this a uniquely interesting trail.

We went again on a cloudy day and it was no less spectacular. That day the water in the channel was calm and clear as glass.

Ever since this walk Grandma has had a bee in her bonnet buzzing about writing a children's book about the trail. When she first mentioned it I was entertained by the notion, but expected it to pass with little to show for it but a handful of photos and scribbled notes - like so many entertaining notions do.

But to my surprise this idea hasn't petered out. Grandma won't let it. We took some older elementary age girls on the walk and asked them about what they thought would be interesting in a book, and Grandma has talked to the geologist at the university about coming out with us to identify some of those pretty pebbles and answer questions. Grandma says that she figures that if she talks to enough people about it, it'll happen, and I don't see why not.

The biggest problem we're having with this new project is that we are having trouble reconciling ourselves to what kind of children's book we want. A story with scientific tidbits, or straight information with maybe a question and answer format, or something completely different? What age group do we want to aim for? Etc.

We'll just have to see what happens. And any ideas you might have would be appreciated. ;)