Took us Much much longer to drive to Shelter Cove than we expected. The roads were so twisty and slow for the RV that we probably averaged 20mph the whole way. Stopped in Fort Bragg to get groceries and call Mark & Karen. It was 2:45pm and they were already in camp; we wouldn't get there for another 4 hours. Along the way, on a downhill grade so steep we were starting to smell the sharp smell of our brakes heating up, we passed a sign saying "RV crashes 1996 1998 1999." Kept me alert.

If you are ever considering exploring the Lost Coast, and you are anywhere near Shelter Cove, don't even think of staying in the Shelter Cove Campground. It was given 2 stars (out of 5) by our campground book, but the reviewer must have been feeling generous. Otherwise, I wonder how bad a one-star would be. We started refering to it immediately as "the pit," as we were greeted by drunken homeless-looking types singing very bad karaoke to Steve Miller tunes. That went on all Saturday night. The space we were given didn't have a sewer hookup, and we had to park almost in our neighbor's site in order to reach the water hookup. But once we settled in, we just laughed at all the drunks with Karen & Mark Olson, ate wonderful food with them, watched as deer bounced by, and enjoyed seeing the sunset over the ocean.

September 5
Drove a frightfully narrow dirt road up the cliffs to a hike that we didn't end up taking (thankfully), then decided to go to the beach, to fly our kite and give Mark Olson a chance to surf. We had two choices: Shelter COve, near our campground, and Black Sands Beach aways north. Shelter Cove was just about out of beach (high tide) and what was left of the beach was populated with pickup trucks full of what looked like last night's karaoke crowd. So we chose Black Sands, which looked like a nice wide, relatively empty beach (from the cliffs above). It must have been named by someone looking down from those cliffs, because there is actually No sand at Black Sands. Just large and small black pebbles. They are very beautiful, and extremely hot. We put our towels down and noticed the steep slope right at the water's edge. Karen and I kept saying "gee, no one is in the water at all, and the slope seems so steep." We really hoped that Mark wouldn't insist on boogieboarding out there. And we started telling stories we'd heard about "sleeper waves" (rogue waves that surprise folks and can pull people under). They can happen anywhere on the California coast, but this place just looked ripe for them, with that steep slope. So the guys show up (they dropped us off and drove up the cliffs to park) and agree that the surf is too dangerous to play in (whew). We're chatting with them when all of a sudden we are doused by a strong wave that almost sends Katie off her feet. Karen (thank god) grabbed Katie immediately, and we all looked at each other like "what the ****!" No one was hurt, and by an odd piece of luck we had left all our cameras in our cars by mistake, so they were spared from the flood. Karen's cellphone was with us, however, and is now R.I.P. Luckily I had just dropped Mark's wallet & keys into our backpack--they had been laying on a towel. And Katie was just fine. She recovered instantly and went on to climb a big (25-foot) rock outcropping on the beach with us, to view the coast and a couple seals we glimpsed. Another family down the beach kept playing at the water's edge, and caught two sleeper waves while we were there. We couldn't believe they would let their littlest boy (who weighed about what Katie does) play there, but we'd seen enough of the Shelter Cove crowd to just shake our heads.

September 6
Left the campground after walking down to the pretty little lighthouse (it looks like the top of a regular-size lighthouse). It had been on top of a 400-foot cliff up at Cape Mendocino, a few miles north up the coast. But it was rusting away there, and so the locals saved it and restored it and have it at Shelter Cove. It is truly darling, having been made in the 1860s. It's about a hundred yards from a cliff, and looking down onto the narrow beach below you can see dozens of enormous seals (so big that they look like sea lions). I wish I'd had the camera. One had died and it is really amazing how far a smell like that can travel.

We unhitched the car for the steep drive out of Shelter Cove (bye Bye!), and Mark made really good time in the RV while I drove ahead in the car.

Really cute town alert: at Mark Olson's suggestion, we wandered a few miles off of 101 to the town of Ferndale (south of Eureka). It's a tiny Victorian village, cute and artsy, with a well-preserved 19th-century main street with fewer of the cocktail lounges lining it that most of the gold country towns seem to have. Behind the large yards of the sweet Victorian cottages you see dairy cows lazing in green pastureland. It may have been a movie set, but I was fooled into thinking it was a town. We took many pictures, especially at a little museum dedicated to the annual Kinetic Art Sculpture Race (between Eureka and Ferndale, I think). Participants build a human-powered contraption to race 38 miles over three days, over mostly roads but also water. My favorite sculpture in the museum was the converted CHP car (powered by four folks pedalling inside). A photo of it is in our photos section. I could have stayed in Ferndale for a day or two more, meeting the folks behind the art and stuff, but we're starting to realize that travel in the RV is slow, when you start looking at how far north you are getting on the map. I think Mark expected us to be getting a little farther a little faster, so we left Ferndale, camped up the road a bit at scenic Trinidad Bay, near the redwoods and elk.

Here are pictures from Shelter Cove and Ferndale, CA

Our site at the pit--I mean Shelter Cove Campground. You can see the airport in the back. It was kinda fun watching the little planes land and take off.

One of the more permanent residents of Shelter Cove Campground, living out of tents and an old GMC bus printed with a tool company name on it. Their kids built a wooden lean-to fort against the back fence.

A view of the pretty little lighthouse. It was my view while I cooked.

All of us eating lunch at the start of a hike that we decided against taking. Too hot, too exposed, and longer than our map had shown. We went to Black Sands Beach instead.

Ferndale was filled with Victorian homes; here is perhaps the fanciest, now a B&B.

Katie in front of a tiny Victorian on the main street; it's just her size.

Here's the new eco-friendly cop car.

Like the cop car, this was a contestant in the Kinetic Art Sculpture Race.