Part 2 - The Lost Coast Trail - What is Lost is Found

START HERE - LOST COAST PART 1


The problems presented with life in the small town of Petrolia, CA (Part 1) dictated largely what this area would become in the future.  People oddly don’t like to have the ground moving or shaking underfoot.  Buildings and highways and the other flotsam that mankind seems to bring wherever we go don’t stand up too well to this kind of activity either.

End of Highway US 1 - over the hood of Whitey's hot rod 2011 Nissan Versa

When California was building highway US 1 up the coastline it was certainly a challenge in the lower half of the state.  There are lots of cliffs and canyons, erosion and landslides, earthquakes and ocean waves that all had to be conquered as man seems obsessed with doing – perhaps part of the notion of Manifest Destiny.  They did it naturally, but at great cost and continuing cost as these elements persist each day at tearing down what was built.  When the builders covered the 600 miles up from the South and got to Rockport, CA, some 200 miles north of San Francisco – enough was enough.  It was like the bad relationship that you keep hoping will get better and it doesn’t.  Perhaps this is where the expression was coined and affectionately applied to discarded girlfriends, “That bitch was a bad piece of road”.  So the bad piece of road was turned inland to join US highway 101, away from the very rugged coastline that lay ahead.

Since modern man does not generally venture too far from their cars, 150 feet I read somewhere, and kids today see, if they are even looking, national parks through the food smeared windows of their air-conditioned mini-van, this area without a road is essentially lost to the general public.  It was dubbed the Lost Coast – and I am glad it was found by me. 

If you look on a map of California, you will see a prominent bulge near its border with Oregon – Cape Mendocino - between Eureka and Fort Bragg - this is the Lost Coast.  Plastic surgeons have rhinoplastied smaller bulges than this on spoiled sixteen year old girls.   Since I was afraid of being sequestered in a car myself, food on windows withstanding, I was wondering how I was going to spend any quality time visiting Petrolia and this lost shook-up world.  That is when I discovered the Lost CoastTrail.   Now this is a hike I could do.  It starts at the beach where the Mattole river enters the blue Pacific ocean and heads down the coast to Shelter Cove, CA some 25 miles distant.  Perfect – I can visit the town I have been stalking and take a nice walk along the beach listening to the surf and look at seashells.  What is this you say?  There are lions(sea), bears, rogue waves, snakes, skunks, pot growers and other forms of life altering beings that I may meet?  Bring it on!! 

Mattole Beach - the Mattole River enters just before first hill -9-18-2011

        Being a man of a certain age (I really love that line – a nice way to say mid-life crisis), I think we look at ourselves for something in life that reassures us that we are still the virile (not viral as some men probably are at this age) man our wives were once oddly attracted to; one last chance to be the man we want to be or thought we were.  I didn’t need a young twenty year old girlfriend for that; I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had one…well.  Besides she would never get my '80s movie references.  I already have the cool red sports car – had it since I was 4 (pre-school crisis).  But also for the last ten years at work I felt like I was driving with my eyes closed.  I was getting called in the middle of the night for operational issues, I was not happy with my job or the changed corporate culture, or even where the company was heading.  Sadly I didn’t have the confidence or courage to quit.  So this looked like it could recharge the batteries that seemed to have lost their ability to hold a charge.  Maybe give me the push I needed to make a change in my life.

To be honest though, thinking of camping alone in the wilderness, 3000 miles from home, with bears and Bigfoot, would sometimes wake me up at night.  I would lie awake staring up at the clock we have that projects time and temperature on the ceiling, wondering how I would ever be able to do it.  How would I get this clock to work in my tent?

See – Part 3 -The LostCoast of California – Family Connection