The weather in Juneau follows one simple rule:
It will never be warm, only cold or cool.
In the same way, the rain will always fall,
so go out and do something, or you’ll never at all!
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That’s what we thought as we trekked out to camp.
In the rain and the cold and the wind and the damp.
But there was another rule by which we didn’t abide:
That you must always be careful of high and low tide!
So everything was fine as we hiked ’round the cove,
looking forward to strawberries and a nice warm stove.
And after a nice afternoon had passed…
to all of our shock, the tide had come fast!
The once easy road we had followed before,
was covered by ocean, it was simply no more!
So along the forested coast we trekked,
trying to stay positive (and not get our shoes wet).
And when we finally had made it back,
we realized the rule that we had all lacked.
And to you, dear reader, we will confide:
Always remember to watch the tide!
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Yesterday the kids got together and hiked out to Echo Ranch Bible Camp, one of our favorite places in all of Juneau. It was raining, but like the poem says, you can’t wait for sunshine to go outside!
You couldn’t see the mountains because of low cloud cover, but the views from the beaches and trails were still stunning.
Echo Ranch Bible camp just finished its last children’s camp last week. For the next month retreat groups of different kinds will go out and use the camp. We have all grown up going out to the camp and it holds a lot of memories for everyone! If you’d like to see what a typical week of camp looks like for the kids in Juneau, head on over to this link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pnv3iMTNhQ
Quinn went out last summer and shot this weekly camp video for the senior-high camp. You get a real picture of what ERBC looks like when the sun comes out!
The reason for the hike out? Strawberries! Echo Ranch has a long strip of beach were strawberry plants grow all over. Emily was hoping to get enough to make some jelly. So she employed the help of everyone to go out and pick with her.
Cedar was very happy to be out roaming around after being stuck in the car for the drive out. She didn’t help much with the berry picking though…
The wild strawberries can be very hard to find. They are usually very small, and hide deep within thickets of leaves. Another problem we had? The strawberry leaves have dashes of red in them as fall draws nearer. So you may think you’ve found one, when in reality you have only found a brightly colored leaf. They make pretty crowns though:
Although many berries were picked, not many found their way into the empty bags. In the end Emily gave up on the jam idea and everyone just ate the berries! They may have been small, but they were sure sweet and tasty!
After being in the rain for so long, it was time to dry off and warm up!
Because the camp was empty, we were able to stay inside one of the cabins. Quinn made a fire, while the girls took out the lunch they had packed.
Abby had packed newspaper to help start a fire; imagine our surprise when we found our picture in the stack of paper!
We spent a nice afternoon in the warm cabin. We snacked on burned popcorn (oops!) and sandwiches, while Abby cooked herself a can of beans.
We had gone to our favorite cabin out at the camp, Otter. Usually a boy’s cabin during the summer camp season. The girls loved the view, and even spotted horses on the other side of the river.
When we started back, everything seemed fine…
(Doesn’t Laura look happy, unknowing of the terror that lies ahead?)
It wasn’t until it was too late that we realized the tide had come in much higher then normal. So high in fact that we had to pick our way over rocks and stumps and fallen trees instead of walking on the nice beaches.
We didn’t get any pictures of our adventurous time climbing over the rocks on the way back, but you can imagine our joy when we got nearly around the cove and found a flat stretch of beach to walk on.
The last stretch of beach was so covered by water that we had to find a road through the forest to get back to our cars.
Even though the way back was a bit rocky (literally), we still had a great day. And Emily got her strawberry jam after all, though it wasn’t were she expected it to be from:
Alaska String Band Blog 