Petersburg

Our plan was to spend most of the day here in the Scandinavian influenced town of Petersburg. This is a working fishing town that hasn't given in to the allure of the large cruise ships. We were in town to take advantage of some flightseeing both by helicopter and by seaplane. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and the flights had to be cancelled. There were, however, some great walks offered by the natural history staff. One of the walks was along the Petersburg Creek trail, which winds for 7 miles through the forest. Although we only explored along first mile of the trail, we walked through a beach environment, then a young spruce forest, and finally into a muskeg. Muskeg is a type of bog where the soil and water available to the plants is acidic. This causes the plants to be dwarfed or bansai-like. The rest of the walk was through the lush primary western hemlock forest seen here on a boardwalk built to protect the fragile understory plants.