A Peninsula of Elk

Driving home from the office yesterday, I had to pull over to capture this small gathering of Roosevelt elk on a thin peninsula of grass in the middle of Big Lagoon. Just a bit further north a larger herd massed behind a falling-down barn across from the small state park visitor center setting a similarly picturesque scene. This morning, through the fog and rain, the full Big Lagoon herd grazed the narrow strips of cut grass along the old Redwood Highway at Stone Lagoon.

Some may wonder at the sense of a 35 mile, one-way commute every day, but for my money the half hour drive past Clam Beach, Trinidad, the lagoons and the redwoods has to be among the finest drives to work in the country.

The Poisonious Seal

This wonderfully, badly written sign was rescued from a retiring employee's office not that long ago, and now decorates my humble workspace. Though the provenance is questionable, the story has it coming from the False Klamath Cove area just off the Redwood Highway in southern Del Norte County.

We're assuming there was just a single seal one should avoid throwing spare change at. And we don't know whether 'twas the seal or the coins that were poisonious.