Four

Beyond Fort Bragg, the highway changes completely. It leasurely winds through a landscape that is very green and overflowing with bushes and trees. This goes on for a bit, before the road turns eastwards and sets off into the mountains which lie between the coast and highway 101. It appears that the local highway designers don’t really care for straight roads. The road curves manically, including a couple of wild hairpins. The last five miles before its end are the worst. The highway turns outright evil. It lulls you into thinking the curvy bits are over only to throw a well hidden but nonetheless quite sharp curve at you. With screetching tires, I reach the end of highway 1 and turn into 101.

While the highway tries to be a four lane freeway as often as possible, sometimes there just isn’t enough space for that. It follows the South Fork Eel River. (They really weren’t all that creative when coming up with names around here. There is Eel River, South Fork Eel River, Middle Fork Eel River and North Fork Eel River. I suppose that is what happens if gold is all you can think of.) Here I first see really big Redwood trees. These beasts are truly American in that they are biggest in all sorts of measures. Up to seven meters in diameter, which adds up to about the size of my appartment. 120 meters in height. And not to forget, they grow to over three thousand years of age. They really do have a rather red wood, which takes us back to the imagination of the settlers.

I don’t have to endure this rather well used interstate for too long. The second exit of Garberville takes me to the road to Shelter Cove. Those 21 miles are the wildest road yet. In order to get to the coast again, the road climbs up about six mountains ridges and goes down again. Bravely, my car and I master those and finally decend into Shelter Cove.

To mariners, this area is known as Point Delgada. It consists of a flat headland about two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide along an otherwise steep coast. This, apparently, is enough to build an airstrip and a town around it. Obviously, the place is rather famous with pilots who can park their plane and just walk down to the beach or a hotel. Originally, highway 1 was supposed to go through here as well, but the government chickened out of it. And so the whole area is now known as the Lost Coast, bypassed by most tourists and hence just plain wonderful.

On a whim I decide to try to spend the night here. Being off the beaten track, accomodation is in somewhat short supply. Most people showing up here seem to bring their own trailer. But thanks to the aviators, there are two or three motels as well. Two of them are directly by the beach. I go into the office of the larger of them and ask for a room.

‘I don’t think so, but let me have a look.’ Some shuffling later: ‘Oh, wait. There is one room left.’

This seems to happen to me quite often. Maybe it is some sort of psychology on behalf of the hotel owners the world over to make you happily take the most expensive room which obviously is the only one left. That is true here, too, but the room features a jacuzzi and a wonderful view over the Pacific. Quite worth going over budget, really.

I stroll through town a bit. Directly at the Point Delgada, fisherman are sorting out their catch. What is unwanted goes down through a long plastic pipe back into the ocean. Or rather, it goes directly into a party of seagulls. The beach beyond hence is a bit noisy. Back on the cliffs, a lone piper tries to turn Northern California into the Northern Highlands. The attempt is spoiled when two pick-up trucks rush to join him.

The ground floor of the motel I am staying at is occupied by a restaurant which happens to be featured in my guide book. Usually, I avoid those since the listing tends to mess with the head of the owner. But for one, there is not much choice really, and secondly, it is quite good indeed. They serve seriously fresh fish and the best cheese cake on my trip so far.

After diner I take a bubble bath (Well, I paid for it after all). And then, to the sound of the Pacific’s waves crushing into shore directly below my window and the somewhat less romatic sound of gunfire in the distance, I fall asleep.