August 25 we shot across the Sacramento Valley. It was again hot, as we expected. This day we made it to Clear Lake for an overnight. We stayed at Clear Lake SP on the south shore. It's a large campground but was nearly empty this day. Could be the heat or that this was a Monday. We did not mind being alone. They did have prototype bear boxes as below. I suspect a determined bear would have no trouble smashing one to smitherines, but there they were. Survivors.

It was here, at Clear Lake, we found our Cummings generator, which a lot of effort and expense had gone into to resurecting, went belly up. It first had trouble running the A/C but then something went wrong with the starting system. Now it won't turn over. RIP

The drive from Clear Lake to the coast was very pleasant, and coastal. We were among big trees most of the time. Even bigger than in the Sierras. We love big trees. Reaching the coast proper, we paused at an RV Park in Fort Bragg to do laundry and stock up on food.

Did spend some time looking around Fort Brag, notably the Mendacino Chocolate Company and The Glass Museum. The Glass Museum is not to be missed. It seems Glass Beach, that the museum represents, was a garbage dump in the early years of Fort Bragg. Since then, all the garbage has decomposed except for the glass items. (There were no plastic items back then.) So the beach(s) contain tumbled and smoothed remnants of glass. Pretty cool, but well picked over.

Highway 1 north from Fort Bragg was curvy and hilly but well paved and easy to travel. This goes right along the Pacific with great views.

Then on to the main event. Where Highway 1 goes inland to meet up the US-101 Usal Road continues north. This is the real start of the Lost Coast. The road is dirt, very narrow with sharp turns, and extremely steep up and down. This is all relative, with a jeep or Tacoma it would be easy, and trivial with a sideXside. But for our first experience with Ziggy, a wide body two wheel drive camper van/motorhome, it was exciting. The only problems were in our heads though. Some 10 miles in is Usal Beach, an isolated camp spot and the first stop along the Lost Coast off road route.

We arrived at Usal Beach the 27th, a Wednesday. It was nearly deserted for a great day of walking on the beach and resting. You can see in the panorama below that the sun was out, an event not expected on the coast. It wasn't mentioned but the weather has been wonderful, a little hot at the start and at Clear Lake but always sunny and clear. Marvelous.

There was a large flock of pelicans the first day or two. Must be food in them there waves. Even saw a seal or two, but hard to count the number of seals. And even some artwork left by long departed natives, or campers with too much time on their hands.

But mostly relaxing.

Then came the weekend, actually worse as it was Labor Day weekend. The atmosphere changed. An invasion of campers/overlanders showed up making it crowded and noisy. The seals left and there were far fewer pelicans. We try to hide on weekends, especially three day weekends, but this time had no reservations. (maintaining a loose schedule) We'd likely have left but feared we'd not find another site. So we hung on till Monday. It was OK though, we didn't have to go back to work Tuesday. You can see us in the pic below, way in the back, if you look hard.

Well, it was interesting watching the many rigs getting stuck in the very soft fluffy sand. We were parinoid enough to stay on solid packed sand. We think it was smart.

Our route was to continue north on Usal Road. However, the initial 10 miles to Usal Beach had us a little spooked. We asked everyone we could about the road north but almost everyone drove in and out from Highway 1. Hard to get good info, "you think our wide, lifted, two wheel camper van/motorhome could get through?" No similar to be found at Usal Beach. The only feedback we got is one rider on a motorcyle said he thought there was a tight spot where trees were down, maybe. After much thought we decided to take the alternate route, back to Highway 1, out to US-101, then back to the coast at Shelter Cove. So that was our new route. We're getting really old, conservative, and paranoid. But this attitude has saved us before.

Leaving Usal Beach on Monday it was foggy at the beach. A light fog that thinned out as we climbed the hills from Usal. It was a beautiful drive with sunshine filtering through the fog and trees.

US-101 was very busy when we got out to it. Well, Monday of Labor Day weekend, du. Nice drive through beautiful trees up 101. We turned at Redway towards Shelter Cove and the coast. Stopped on the outskirts of Redway thinking, "Oh look, there's a turn out for lunch". The small parking lot turned out to be in the John B. Dewitt Redwood Natural Reserve. A very nice redwood grove which we walked around in for and hour or so. Quite a nice surprise.

The road to Shelter Cove was very slow and windy, but paved the whole way. It's the only town on the Lost Coast and truely out of the way. We stayed overnight in their RV Park and looked around town a little. Very little shopping, one grocery store which we patronized. The Lost Coast hiking trail starts here and goes north. Would be great but we're no longer up to backpacking.

From Shelter Cove we were back on our original route. We headed north on King Peak Road. It started out a nice two lane dirt road but narrowed as we traveled north. A little ways from the Ocean so no great views. The route had us taking Saddle Mountain Rd. for "great vistas". The guide suggested "adventure vans" may want to bypass Saddle Mountain. The "bypass" on the map is to continue on King Peak Rd. Gaia (mapping software) terms Saddle Mt. as a "minor road" with a short section of "high clearance road" while King Peak was termed a "tertiary road". We decided to be "cautious" and stay on King Peak Rd.

King Peak Rd. was far less traveled after the Saddle Mountain turnoff. It seemed most traffic goes that route. The road was a two track but OK, narrow with some low hanging vegitation. Our first real obstacle was several creek crossings. Very little flow but a good "dip" in the road. Ziggy has a dismal departure angle so this type of obstable is concerning. After a few minutes of thought and no place to turn around Hugh went through the fist. Ziggy dragged the rear hitch on the way through so it was close, but no harm. The next three or four were less dramatic with no dragging. The second obstable, for us, was a number of very steep and very tight switch backs. Ziggy didn't turn sharp enough to negotiate these without backing up. With the rutts in the road this resulted in some three wheeling to get through. A little concerning if not terrifying. That limited slip differential really was a good idea. No other technical sections but for us it was on the edge. Wish I had some pictures but it was too terrifying to contemplate documentation.

Towards the north end of King Peak Rd. it improved and finally ran into Wilder Ridge Rd. That was paved for the most part. This is in the heart of the Emerald Triangle which was clearly evindent. All along here there were marijuana grows, mostly in domed greenhouses. "Well sure, but how did you know it was pot if you couldn't see it?" Well, the smell permiated the countryside. Not something that could be missed. Wilder Rd took us though Honeydew. A small community with just a small store. We stopped for ice-cream and talked with the proprieter about the pot grows. Turns out that all those we came through were owned by the same guy! The vast majority in the area are owned by only two guys.

At Honeydew we met up with Motole Rd. which took us to the coast and Mattole Beach. There's a BLM campground there where we stayed for two nights. Mattole Beach stretched both north and south with no head lands in sight. It's the north end of the Lost Coast hiking trail. You can see in the pictures the weather had turned cloudy but still little rain. So far the weather on the coast has been spectacular.

Leaving Mattole Beach we backtracked to Petrolia and Mattole Road. Here we continued north into new territory. Mattole Rd is a nice paved two lane country road. Quite slow with many curves and hills. In the Lost Coast tradition we found few if any towns with very light populace between. Nice. Some of it follows the coast while other sections are over the hills a little inland. The vegitation also varies between pastures and rain forest canopy over the road. Very pleasant drive.

Mattole Road continues for some mile until it reaches Ferndale. The largest community we'd seen since Fort Bragg. We've been here before (We've been everywhere, man) and it's a nice tourist oriented town. It's also the northern terminus of our Lost Coast adventure.

The end of our Lost Coast adventure but not the end of the overall adventure by a long shot. Keep reading and we'll head north on HW-101 to the Oregon Coast.

Yaa, Yaa, but where's Waldo?