The Lost Coast and the Giants

Route

Wednesday, November 11th. I've learned that when you camp next to a big pasture in a park, you should expect visitors in the night. After the two bucks, a mama deer and her baby came by in the morning, and who knows what came through in between. We both woke up every two or three hours, which isn't bad. The gnats came back with a vengeance as soon as the sun was up, as if they'd been waiting on us, so we hustled and got out of there.

On the way out, right along the highway, huge herds of elk were lying down in the fields, a couple of big bulls in the middle and the cows all around them, having a sleepy morning. We passed sheep farms and cattle too, and Rhea bounced from window to window with her tail up, taking in all the smells.

Past McKinleyville, we saw our first eucalyptus trees lining the road. They're from Australia and first arrived in California during the gold rush. In the 1870s, and again around 1910, people planted them as a fast-growing source of railroad ties, but the young wood twisted and warped as it dried and rotted fast, so the ties never panned out. It's getting warmer, too. We slept with the tent flaps cracked open last night, and it was in the high 50s before 9am.

Eureka put us back in the land of strip malls, shopping centers, and people. We found a really nice co-op and loaded up on food for today and tomorrow. It was already 65 before 10am, which felt more like Southern California, when the normal high here this time of year is about 58.

From Eureka, we turned onto Mattole Road and headed for the Lost Coast. It's an old-school two-lane road with a dotted yellow line down the middle, winding and weaving through the mountains, and it's so full of potholes that we couldn't go much faster than 25 or 30. We passed a pickup or two, probably hauling cattle, and that was about it. When we crested the ridge, the whole coast opened up below us, with huge, sweeping dark-sand beaches, waves breaking for miles, evergreen forest, golden fields glistening in the sun, and fog lingering out over the frigid Pacific.

From there, the road ducked in and out of the forest, through gangly, moss-covered limbs blowing in the breeze, then out into a mile or two of open pasture with old barns, cattle, and barbed wire along the road. It was just us out there, but with all our gear, plenty of gas, food, and water, we were in good shape.

The Lost Coast is well named. The King Range rises about 4,000 feet straight up from the sea, so steep that the highway builders routed both Route 1 and 101 inland around it, and its 26 miles of shoreline are the longest undeveloped coast in the continental United States. The mountains are still rising, too. In the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquake, about 15 miles of this coast jumped up as much as four and a half feet, stranding the sea urchins and everything else in the tide pools.

When we came over the final crest and saw the Pacific, it felt like southern Italy or Sardinia, with the blues, the golden grasses, and the mist in the air. It was 71 degrees on the coast in November! Hello, California. Shoes off, windows down, music up.

We pulled into a beach campground right behind the dunes, which I wasn't expecting, and there wasn't a soul in it. We picked a spot at the far end, backed up against the dunes, and ran down to the beach so Rhea could burn off some energy. It's a dark-sand beach piled with driftwood, wild and unkempt, and nobody else was around. We spent a good two hours there. I had lunch, did a little work, and we both laid out in the sand for a much-needed siesta.

They call it the Lost Coast for a reason. The road passes no towns to speak of, just a few people living way out in the boonies who must like the isolation. We crossed one single-lane bridge after another and passed through Honeydew, a cool little town. It's beautiful back here, and I'm glad we explored it, but it's a little too quiet for me.

Along the way, we saw two flocks of tiny, bright yellow birds buzzing from one spot to the next. I took them for hummingbirds, but hummingbirds don't travel in flocks, so they were more likely lesser goldfinches, which flock up for the fall and winter.

At the very end of Mattole Road, we dropped back into old-growth redwoods, and I'd honestly forgotten they were on our itinerary. This is the Rockefeller Forest, the largest stand of old-growth coast redwoods left in the world, more than 9,000 acres of it. John D. Rockefeller Jr. gave $2 million, the state matched it, and in 1931 the forest was bought from the Pacific Lumber Company. The road shrinks to a lane and a half and weaves between trees 10 feet across, with ferns everywhere, and around 4 o'clock, the light started coming through gold. To think this used to stretch all the way to the coast. We were among giants.

We camped beneath the redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants. We grabbed firewood at the entrance, found a spot nestled under some big trees, and got a fire going. I cooked chicken apple sausages with farro, Rhea got the rest of her raw beef, and I had a nice beer by the fire before a hot shower in the coin-operated showers, which was heavenly.

Steinbeck spent two days in the redwoods in late October 1960. "There's a cathedral hush here," he wrote. We spent our two nights under the giants about two and a half weeks later in the year, and we woke up to the same hush.

Rhea

Rhea was up for every visitor in the night. Around 1:30, she sat by the tent screen, booping it with her nose and waiting to go out. I could tell there was something out there she wanted to chase, but I figured she also had to pee, so I hooked her to the lead, she did a big pee, and we climbed back up. She went right back to sleep.

A high-energy, high-prey-drive dog who's also protective at night is a double-edged sword. She'll alert to anything big that comes near the tent, which is what we want, but she also wakes up to every deer and raccoon. Nothing gets missed. I wouldn't trade her for anything on this trip.

We tried to skip the trazodone this morning, but by McKinleyville she was too nervous in the back, and with a long day of driving ahead, I gave it to her. She was a champ on all those curves. She ran the beach on the Lost Coast and then slept hard through our siesta.

At night, she sits at the bottom of the ladder waiting for me, and sometimes she boops me with her nose, as if to say, "Come on, I'm tired." We climb up, she snuggles in next to me, and I read a bit while she passes out. The best nights of sleep on this whole trip haven't been in motels. They've been up in the tent with my girl.