Day 11: Finding the Lost Coast

Today I felt like I traveled to multiple different worlds. The day started overcast, with a great conversation with Herb at the diner in Ferndale. I then climbed through what looked like neverland, before broaching through the clouds and into sunny green pastures. Then back down through the clouds into a very vibrant small town before settling for the night listening to the waves.

The mornings breakfast, at Joe’s in downtown Ferndale, was recommended by someone at the pizza place last night, and boy am I glad they did. The food was delicious, I left totally stuffed, and I got to meet Herb. Herb is a painter, and very talkative. I imagine, back in his younger days, he was probably quite the lady’s man. He used to live in SF, but moved to Ferndale about 20 years ago. We talked for awhile about modern life in SF, and why he moved. Ferndale, it turns out, is a really nice town. It has a supermarket, hardware store, 3 bars, and 5 restaurants. Everything is walkable. And that’s what Herb likes about it. Not as much going on as SF (okay, really nothing going on), but a great place to live. Seems like it too.

After breakfast I began my ascent into the lost coast. It was pretty brutal, but also incredibly beautiful. There were long sections of road so steep I had to remain standing in order to peddle the bike up the hill. But the forest, with the morning haze, seemed magical. It was hard to capture as a picture, but it was really nice.

After getting to the top, I broke out of the forest and entered beautiful pastures. The cows must not see many bicycles, because they seemed terrified of me, but not of cars going by. The descent down to the lost coast was terrifying for me, the road is in terrible condition, with large potholes everywhere. I took my time going down, as fun as it would be to go fast.

The lost coast section of the road was absolutely beautiful! The road was lined with flowers, to my right was beautiful coastline, and to my left was gorgeous green hills. It was very pleasant to bike along (even with a slight head wind.)

The last section before camp goes up into the town of Petrolia. Petrolia (named as such because it was one of the first places in California they installed oil wells) is a bustling small town. There’s a Post Office and general store. And the general store literally has everything, from a hardware section to ice cream. The store was also packed. Seems like a pretty functional small town.

On my way down to camp I heard a “you made it” from some workers on the side of the road. I got talking to them, and it turns out they work for the USGS. They have a monitoring station that measures water volume at a certain place in the Bear River. They were measuring volume themselves to verify the stations accuracy. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was pretty cool to hear how it all worked. They also had a cool little remote control trimaran to do the measurement, which was cool.

Camp tonight is at the head of the lost coast trail, a 3 day hike along the coast. The campsite is fairly nice. It was windy all day, and you can hear the waves :). I got here around 2, so made lots of progress in the “Just Mercy” book. The book is really hard to read, because it brings to light many injustices faced by people on death row today. It is very well written, and hard to put down.

Around 5, a women named Brandy and her two dogs setup camp next to me. Brandy is 42 and recently retired from the navy. She just did a 3 day out and back on the lost coast. Apparently the weather on the coast was pretty bad, and travel was slow, so she’s going inland and hiking in the redwoods. Her two dogs are beautiful beautiful golden retrievers. We talked about her gear (she has opted to use a quilt to sleep with, I can’t remember which one, but she loves it), and has a really nice pillow. I’m sleeping on my puffy, but think I’ll invest in a pillow when I get back. She also has 3 kids, all of whom are different. And figuring out what to do with her life now that she’s retired.

Tomorrow should be a super tough day. Unfortunately, the dinner I made was not enough, so I’m going to bed a bit hungry. I’ll have to compensate with cliff bars tomorrow. #5000 calories a day. Goodnight!