Songs & S'mores & and an Octopus?

Sunday was the annual Girl Scouts Songs & S'mores event at Sandy Beach.  Always fun.  Camp songs.  Campfire.  S'mores.  You get the idea.  This year, some of the girls elected to go with some troop leaders on a hike.  Cora did.  And came back to tell us all about the octopus she found washed up on the beach.  Highlight of the afternoon for Cora; she couldn't wait to tell us about how big the suckers were, the three hearts it has and the "delightful" aroma.  She led Addy and I back to check it out again with her.  

The most glorious Juneau fall

If you ask me what September and October are like in Juneau, I'd say grey and raining, all the time, every day.  But not this year.  This has been the most glorious Juneau fall.

We went to our friends' home on Saturday and got to explore the beautiful Douglas Island woods, taking a trail that starts out of their backyard.

At times, it required a little bit of bushwhacking..

...but with the late afternoon sun streaming through the trees and the subtle changes in colors of the moss and ferns, it was easy to want to keep pressing on.

Some of us stayed firmly planted on the ground, exploring the underside of a fallen tree,

others (namely, Cora) climbed up to get a view from a higher vantage point.

The trail went up quite a ways and then led out to a beautiful muskeg, which again the afternoon sunlight just seemed to make glow.

This has been the most glorious fall in Juneau!

Moose?

We don't have moose in Juneau.  Or we didn't have moose in Juneau.  We heard stories of a small herd of moose who lived well out of the road.  Now we hear stories of moose spottings off Back Loop Road, near the area of the glacier.  We took a leisurely family hike on West Glacier Trail on Sunday afternoon and saw the tracks ourselves; the moose are here.  And their footprint is enormous!

The girls animal sense elevated also found some old signs of beaver activity.

And our own animal made lots of tracks of her own, splashing though Mendenhall Lake and the forest.

We also got to play, or if you're Cora turn into a popsicle and eat, with the first ice of the season.