Picnic At Yontocket

Today was sunny and actually warm. I was out and about for work during the afternoon and the thermometer read 74! In Crescent City! So I got a picnic together before Michael got home from work and we all went out to enjoy the evening sunshine. A coworker had told me about three hikes that share a trail head in the dairy lands of Fort Dick, so we decided we'd try those. One trail leads to Yontocket, a historic Tolowa village site. In the 1850s, the white settlers of Crescent City and Smith River attacked the Tolowa and Yurok tribes in a series of massacres. At Yontocket, local tribes had gathered for an annual world renewal ceremony and 600 people were killed.

This might seem to make for a strange picnic site, but it is an absolutely beautiful place and there's a picnic table just outside the fence for the memorial site. We weren't exactly expecting the picnic table, but we took advantage of it. Looking out over the mountains, dunes, Smith River, flowers, and incredible trees, it's hard to imagine how people could come to such a place for the purpose of killing other people.

The sun was still warm while we ate. Darcy enjoyed her standard sesame seed bagel with butter. Adventurous eating -- in other words, not-starch -- is not in her game-plan these days. She tried a bite of strawberry under great protest and then moved on to starchier and better things.

And then it was time to go play in the flowers. These rolling hills are really grown-over beach dunes and some of them were covered in these white flowers. After we packed up, we followed a second trail to the Smith River, almost at it's mouth. I have more pictures, but they'll have to wait. It's too late and we have another indoor farmers' market tomorrow morning followed by a haircut for Darcy in the early afternoon. It's going to be a big day.