Beaches, Juneau style

 

Labor Day weekend feels a little different here.  Everywhere else I’ve ever lived its usually hot and sticky, the last gasp of summer before cool fall weather.  This is the last weekend of the Minnesota State Fair (one of my favorite places to be).  Camping, picnics, ‘Labor Day Clearance’ sales, it’s the last weekend of summer.  You sort of get that feeling here too.  Sort of.  It’s in the 50s, a mix of rain, clouds and sun.  We went to the beach for a walk as the tide was turning and starting to come in.  There were a few other families out, hunkered down in picnic shelters or out walking on the beach.  I give the people of Juneau credit – they go out and have fun regardless of the weather (which is a must if you don’t want to be inside most of the time…and it’s far too beautiful here for that).   It rained a bit, then the sky above us cleared and the sun lit up some of the clouds – wow.  

The beaches here are rocky and covered in life – barnacles, mussels, kelp (that’s the yellow-orange stuff in the top picture and also below), sometimes starfish.  

Ecology lesson:  Can you tell by looking at this picture which way the water is and which way is the land?

Answer: The bare face of the rock faces the waves and water.  The action of the water, and the rocks it can carry with it in storms, makes it hard for barnacles to settle or survive once settled on the pounding ocean side.  You see most of the barnacles and mussels tucked into crevices or on the ‘landward’ side of rocks.

The small creeks tricking down from the hills feed into the beaches and disappear quickly into the rocks.  The tides here have pretty big swings and the beaches have a long, shallow gradient, so when the tide turns and starts heading in, you can see it rushing back, eating up the beach.

This beach was only a couple miles from where we live, between Irv and my work.  There were several picnic shelters, bathrooms, and fire pits near the high tide line.  It would be fun to come back out with friends and have a bonfire. 

We walked the beach out a ways, then took a wooded trail back to the truck.  Look at this mushroom we saw growing along the trail!  It’s beautiful, but the color screams “don’t eat me, I’m poisonous!”.  Or at least that what it seems like to me.