BLUEBERRY PICKING!!
Another beautiful day! We went blueberry picking with some new friends, Heidi and Damon. We hiked up to the top of the cliff and had a gorgeous view of the village and ocean. The mountains were also out (much like in Seattle)--You can only see them off in the distance on really clear days.














Above: Janna with the outline of Stebbins off in the distance
Below: Nick with a view of all the lakes that will soon be frozen over.














The tudra, as we mentioned before is really squishy to walk on. It literally feels like a sponge. The ground is covered with foliage and bushes. At first we were looking for blueberry bushes, as you would imagine them in Montana. You know, bushes that are at least knee level or above. We soon discovered that the blueberries actually hug the ground--So it is quite the task to stay bent over for a long period to pick enough to fill a bag. There are five types of berries here: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, and salmonberries. Blueberry season is just ending and blackberry season is beginning (these blackberries look more like huckleberries then what we get in the pacific northwest). When we were picking blueberries the cranberries were everywhere, but we were told that you don't pick them until after the first frost or something like that.














Sadly, we only filled up part of our bags (Well--they are really big bags), and we did eat as many as we put in the bag. The blueberry party ended when a ginormous spider (bright yellow with black markings) made its presence known on Janna's backpack. Although fascinating, we didn't really look at sitting on the softy, cushiony ground in the same way--so we decided to walk the other way down the beach and find some spiderless, new territory.




















above: Heidi, Damon, and Nick standing amongst some wildflowers that look like cotton.
below: The other end of the beach has a cliff that is actually called, "the cliff" by the locals. There is a cave, and as you can see it is not a good place for lemmings to hide, for obvious reasons the traps will not be set up here.




















Below: Pretty view on the way home from our hike. We will get some updated photos and post them soon!