John Muir cabin trail

Perhaps the number one thing I love about Juneau is that outdoor recreation opportunities are literally right outside your door.  There are dozens of trails that are accessible from town - leaving from behind the grocery store, or on your drive to work, or in this case, the Spaulding Meadows/John Muir Cabin trail head is less than two blocks from home.  And it's good recreation - hiking, biking, kayaking, beach combing, glaciers, and more.  I don't ever want to leave.

That said, it's getting COLD.  The hike today was about 6 miles round trip, if you go all the way to the cabin, but we only made it about 2 miles in before we had to turn around.  It was too icy on the boardwalks through the muskeg to keep pressing up towards the cabin, and the ground wasn't quite frozen enough that we could walk on the ground without sinking into the squishy tundra-like ground.  It was a beautiful sunny day though, and I'm glad I took time off from working on a take-home midterm to get outside!

 A couple of times this fall (after tourist season ended) we've noticed helicopters flying low across the hills, with big loads of something hanging down.  It didn't seem like they were carrying tourists (because most had already left and they weren't flying over the glaciers) and they didn't seem to be in a big enough hurry for it to be any sort of rescue or training mission.  Today we figured out what they were doing!  They were carrying bundles of timbers and bags of rocks and dropping them along trails for trail repair work.  Cool. 

 The trail had some very scenic waterfalls, and we spent some time playing with longer exposures on my camera.  I'll have to hike back up with a tripod soon - these were done while trying to steady the camera on Steve's backpack on a rotten stump that was splitting as the weight of the camera sat on it.