Ideal Cove and Petersburg
Southeast Alaska is a temperate RAINFOREST. As such, it dutifully let us know it today, by raining on us almost all morning. But it was acceptable as we walked in a lovely Sitka spruce – Western hemlock forest, with a very generous understory consisting of devil’s club, skunk cabbage, two species of blueberries, red huckleberries and many other smaller plants. Some of us took a longer hike up to three lovely lakes and a bog or muskeg, where most of the plants are adapted to living in acid water, horribly poor in free salts, especially nitrogen.
After lunch we docked in the small city of Petersburg, founded last century by Norwegians, a town whose economy is based almost entirely on the fishing industry. Today the season of trawling for pink salmon ended, and some of the big ships were tied in the same dock we were docked at. The names of some of them were very interesting: Cinnamon Lady, Odin, Deception, Kimber, Spicy Lady. Long liners, trollers, purse-seiners, gill netters and others were in port. Besides walking into the amenable town, some of us took a later hike up to a large bog, where more plants were seen, especially those trees adapted to the peculiar conditions there: mountain hemlock, common junipers, lodge pole pines and the valuable Alaska yellow cedar. Of special interest were the sundews, bog gentians and the bog and dwarf blueberries, as well as the bog cranberries and lingonberries. A world unto itself, the bog!
Southeast Alaska is a temperate RAINFOREST. As such, it dutifully let us know it today, by raining on us almost all morning. But it was acceptable as we walked in a lovely Sitka spruce – Western hemlock forest, with a very generous understory consisting of devil’s club, skunk cabbage, two species of blueberries, red huckleberries and many other smaller plants. Some of us took a longer hike up to three lovely lakes and a bog or muskeg, where most of the plants are adapted to living in acid water, horribly poor in free salts, especially nitrogen.
After lunch we docked in the small city of Petersburg, founded last century by Norwegians, a town whose economy is based almost entirely on the fishing industry. Today the season of trawling for pink salmon ended, and some of the big ships were tied in the same dock we were docked at. The names of some of them were very interesting: Cinnamon Lady, Odin, Deception, Kimber, Spicy Lady. Long liners, trollers, purse-seiners, gill netters and others were in port. Besides walking into the amenable town, some of us took a later hike up to a large bog, where more plants were seen, especially those trees adapted to the peculiar conditions there: mountain hemlock, common junipers, lodge pole pines and the valuable Alaska yellow cedar. Of special interest were the sundews, bog gentians and the bog and dwarf blueberries, as well as the bog cranberries and lingonberries. A world unto itself, the bog!
