Pain and Pretty

Spinach fruit pops at the Journey.

Just a post of pretty pictures and stuff we're doing. Today I'm really sore.

I decided I could march a mile up a forest road to visit Camp David Jr., skid down a cliff to see a three-headed creek, butt my way through a quarter mile of downed timber and swamps on the shore of Lake Crescent, and finally get cut off by somebody's lake house and have to scramble back up another cliff, holding on to swordferns to keep from taking a lethal header back down. I used to do this stuff when I was a kid; what possesses me to do it when I'm in sixth decade, the godlets only know.

Lake Crescent Maple tree, human added for scale.

A day with the ducks.

The Makah lady in the lovely cedar hat has invented her own fruit pops - including a lovely spinach-mango concoction I was given a sample. Well, I am the local reporter - it's my JOB. She was selling them at the Journey event in Neah Bay. It's part of people up here figuring out they don't - and can't - strip the land and resources any more. The Makah have been training all their kids to canoe around the Olympic Peninsula. They know our infrastructure - including roads - will collapse someday. All it takes is Tim Eyman keeping on. He's another of those people who think the whole planet is there just for THEM. We had a cat once who thought the whole human race had evolved so she alone could have a lap, but it was a lot less harmful. 

The Clallam River mouth, on a foggy summer day.

The maple tree was part of our lake visit yesterday. It was at the start of my march from hell. The nice tourist posed to show human scale. "Add a human!" she said. Somebody doing an indie film with hobbits could use that area right under the tree. It's big enough. 

The ducks are part of Dan's view all day, on a little secluded beach. "Do not feed the ducks," said the sign. Yeah. Wild ducks, never fed, really do get THAT tame. He had a lovely day. I'm taking pain pills.

Here's the beach, on a summer day, with the fog in. When the tide is out, at least in this part of the yearly sand-movement revolution, the river forms a tiny island, with a very wade-friendly side-creek. Well, wade-friendly for adults. Like any river mouth, it's not really kid-friendly. That place is up by the Park bridge, where the kids can splash around with a nice, firm gravel bottom and no hard current.