Rabid foxes await tourists in paradise?

Visitors to the North Coast of California are being warned of rabid animals. Specifically, rabid foxes in the Patrick's Point State Park.

We no longer visit there, but the park was always one of our favorite destinations on our many trips to the ocean, trips that began more than 50 years ago when our children were still young.

Actually we enjoyed the entire coast from Fortuna to Crescent City. We explored the entire area including Luffen Hole, Trinidad, Patrick's Point, Agate Beach, Orick Beach, Gold Bluff Beach and Fern Canyon.

We hunted agates, polished stones and sanded glass bits on Agate Beach. We collected shells, pieces of driftwood and other flotsam and jetsam of the sea.

My late-husband George fished for red snappers and dipped for surf smelt at Luffen Hole, Orick Beach and Gold Bluff Beach.We spent weekends camping on the beaches, sometimes by ourselves and other times with friends.

We enjoyed the elk herds at both Gold Bluff Beach and Redwood Park without seeing any of the really big bulls. One day as we drove along Gold Bluff Beach, George said, "I wonder why we don't see any really big bull elk."

I laughed at him, and pointed to what looked like big leafless bushes poking above the sand piles and said. "They're right out there.'

He stopped the pickup and really looked.

"I'll be darned," he said. "I thought those were dead bushes sticking out of the sand."

We stayed in the pickup to admire those huge racks of horns.

We played in the surf until wet and weary, then built a driftwood campfire. I would place my cast iron frying pans on the coals and cook our catches. We ate with whetted appetites as the sun dipped into the sea and disappeared.

With our stomachs comfortably filled with fish and our bodies bone weary, it was time to spread our sleeping bags on the sand among the driftwood piles and crawl into them as the spreading darkness overtook us.

Windblown and smoked from our own cook fires, we returned home with our skin sanded and browned and our appetites fully sated.