On Tuesday night we went out camping with our friend Derek again. We hiked to Outer Point on Douglas Island and enjoyed a beautiful night with a bonfire on the beach. In the morning we explored the tide pools (Chris and I aren't from places with oceans and are just like little kids when it comes to tide pools - they are so fun and we can't see them ever getting old!), and found a giant hammock made out of a fisherman's net up in the trees.
We officially have Wednesdays off for the remainder of summer which meant once again we were using back-to-back nights to camp. Derek was kind enough to drop us off at Thane's "end of the road" and we backpacked to DuPont beach. Even though this beach was super beautiful we thought it would be fun to keep going all the way to the end of the peninsula and camp on Bishop's Point. There is a trail that goes to Bishop's Point so we backtracked and went on the other trail to take us there. So far in Juneau we have been really impressed with the trail maintenance, well, obviously the great trail maintenance that has gone into other trails took so much time that Bishop's Point was overlooked. We spent hours bushwhacking and dodging devil's club (this horrid plant that you don't wanna touch), climbing over and under fallen trees, and searching for a trail that kept getting lost. There was a little branch in the trail to an old cabin and we took it. That trail let us go out to the beach and imagine our surprise when we got there, looked left, and then realized how far we had come from DuPont beach - or rather, how far we had not come! We had been so certain that we must be close to the end of the trail, but when we got to the coast it was clear that the conditions of the beaten down trail slowed us so much that we were nowhere near our intended destination. The tide was low so we decided to try following the coast line to Bishop's Point instead of the trail laden in obstacles. Well, as great as the coast line originally seemed it wasn't long before we were sliding and slipping on slick wet rocks trying to go a fair distance. After talking about it we realized that as much as we wanted to get to the end, the reality was we had work the following afternoon. We decided it was a wiser decision to just go back to DuPont beach where we had seen some really nice camping spots and spend the night there so we could enjoy some time in camp. We followed the shoreline (because we preferred slipping on wet rocks over dodging devil's club) and were stoked when we finally had camp set up. We once again explored some tide pools and also had some fun hammocking in the trees.
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| Because of the high rainfall here the trees don't put down very deep roots. When a strong windstorm comes through hundreds of trees topple over leaving massive bald spots on the forest floor. |
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| Abandoned dock at DuPont beach. |
Thursday morning we got up and after hiking out on the trail we still had a few miles of road hiking to get to a shuttle stop so we could get a ride back towards home. As we were walking we began to notice that there was raspberry bushes along the side of the road. We stopped and ate a handful and they were, as Christopher would say, "super delish!" As we continued walking we saw more and more berry bushes and could not stop constantly picking them as we journeyed towards town. There were both raspberry bushes and salmonberry bushes right on the road for about three miles! We ate a lot.
We convinced a friend of ours to go back towards the berry-loving-road to go berry picking with us on Friday. When we were out there we found a section that wasn't just right on the road, but went back into a full field of berries! There was a flowing creek and bushes on bushes on bushes of tasty ripe berries. We think we might have found the Garden of Eden. Needless to say we took home about 4-5 gallons....yum.
On Sunday we had a crazy time in Primary. The teacher for the ten year old class was missing (this was the class we subbed for before) so we taught both the nine year olds and the ten year olds. Well, I'm pretty sure we had the four most rambunctious boys in the whole ward, and none of the girls were even there to add a balance to the class. Though the boys were wild we did our best to teach them, and pray daily that something they learned in class will stick. We have a lot of fun teaching the littles at church, and hope that we do a good job.
Remember to pray and remember to play,
Mr. & Mrs. Andrew
