Lost Coast July 21 - August 1, 2004 Just a true Hippo, Tom needs to be intensely fed and outed, and we dedicated a weekend to such purpose.

	Lost Coast A forested wilderness falls steeply towards an endless beach.

	Dinner at a lookout with a backdrop of poison oak, slopes of Shelter Cove, and Pacific Ocean.

Due to various ailments, which befell us during July, a pretty heavy submarine syndrome has emerged in our home. There was always someone eternally griping and grouching, hopeless zombies dragged around the house, and our spirits had sunk considerably. Therefore we jumped at the first opportunity when there was no visit planned and neither anyone was bedridden, to proceed with a thorough outing and a general climate change.

Lost Coast is indeed a bit ... lost. It is too northerly located to get periodically occupied by beach wallowers, and too far from large cities or famous national parks. Highway 101, which makes a very lively thoroughfare between Los Angeles and San Francisco, shrinks here into a modest road that wheezily winds through redwood forests several tens of miles from the coast. Every shy turnoff towards the Pacific is rather suspect of fading out into a private driveway after the next curve. In short, Lost Coast is an ideal spot for a trip in the middle of vacation season, if you prefer avoiding crowds and summer heat at the same time, and if you desire to enjoy a bit of lonely serenity.

Given our being loaded with one very lively dependent, we can no more simply jump into the car and take off. We had to plan our travel so that actual driving would fall preferably on Tommy's sleeping intervals, and meal breaks would match with our wildlife feeding times. What we had planned, highway traffic conditions quickly invalidated. Thanks to various jams Tom was soon awake and hungry while we were still dragging on at average 30 mph near Petaluma, only a few miles north of San Francisco. Fortunately, Petaluma downtown did not disappoint us. We stopped, more or less randomly, at Ginger Thai bistro. A small place, yet cheerfully painted and clean -- and offering above average, tasty food. Tommy devoured two bottles of baby food and kept longingly gazing at out plates. I tried to offer him one boiled broccoli floret, and here our kid again proved to be a typical Hippo. He grabbed the piece of food and was quite satisfied with it, systematically chewing on it till we adults were, too, finished with our lunches. Thus he received a commendation from the restaurant staff for being the nicest baby they ever had there...

	Black Sands Beach The sand is not of volcanic origin as commonly believed, it's simply a dark sand from local sediments.

	We located our tent on a flat area full of pebbles sufficiently distant from Pacific Ocean.

In a pleasant mood we then continued our journey. Yet in a town named Willits Tom lost his patience again, both with his car seat and with the lack of excitement. When we finally found a place to stop to let him out to roll in grass, we discovered that our wagon seriously hobbles on right front wheel, with a nail embedded in the tread (Sid had been, as I recall, complaining about the car pulling to the right a bit, but we attributed it to our asymmetrical load). A typical American spare wheel looks really like the proverbial fifth wheel: it's really only a temporary replacement, smaller and miserable. However, almost every town includes a tire retailer and service, where they fix small defects briskly. We had to re-inflate the wheel to give us some more confidence (it was not leaking fast to justify hassle with the spare wheel) and shuffle back to Willits, hoping for good luck on Saturday past five p.m. A local cop gave us friendly directions to two local tire shops, and right the first one, Les Schwab, was open. They fixed our wagon and eventually did not want any money, saying they fix their customers' tires for free, and hope to having gained us as their future customers. Nice, is it not? Now we only had to explain to our Tom somehow that he must be peeled off of all those beautiful shiny display wheels, which he has admired like every true male would, and that he must be stuffed back into his car seat.

We were hoping that we would have no problem finding a camping spot at King Range National Conservation Area, and that we would all be able to finally stretch a bit, eat, and eventually get ready to sleep. The whole area disappointed us, quite unpleasantly. After an hour of searching and driving up and down a dirty ridge road, we had found only two places barely acceptable for camping -- one littered with junk, the other beset with poison oak. The rest consisted of wooded ravines (including poison oak). We had to stop on the second place just to feed our desperately hungry Tom, and during our war council we decided that it would be healthier to sacrifice another half hour driving down to a beach, where we could release our junior without worries that he could hit a poison oak. With adults, this plant can evoke a nasty allergic reaction, I did not want to even try it with a baby.

	Pebbles! Pebbles! An excited Tommy runs to devour as many pebbles as possible.

	So you ate a pebble! Give here! Rocks are not for eating!!!

Black Sands Beach, where we eventually ended up, is a very pretty beach. It drags for miles and miles and is really made from black sand. The further from the ocean, the coarser the sand gets; we were camping among pebbles. I think that in a blink of an eye Tom had forgiven us all wrongs -- all these beautiful pebbles! And of course -- he is still in his oral phase, i.e. every admired or tested item gets tasted, and we spent next hour by erecting our tent, interrupting our efforts with running off to torture our poor child (= eject rocks from his mouth, which he was not fond of). Finally we managed to build our tent, win our wrestling match with Tom, get him into his pajamas, and feed him. I expected that he would, overcome by events, fall asleep instantly. Yet children are usually tireless and when Tommy discovered that we would share the tent with him, he erupted into another fit of happiness -- wrapped in his sleeping bag he jumped on each of us, alternatively, and generally exhibited never-ending love and sympathy. I think he fell to sleep some time around eleven -- when both of us with Sid were reduced to unmoving heaps, slowly disintegrating under the flurry of slobbery kisses and little dirty hands (usually aiming to punch us in the eye or some other sensitive organ).

Tom got up at the crack of dawn, but a milk bottle and totally uncooperative, unmoving parent lulled him eventually to last till half past nine. Then he resolutely demanded to be released among all those great pebbles and angrily protested our useless stalling (i.e. taking off his pajamas and putting on his warm sweat pants and shirt). While junior communed with the beach, Sid and I packed about half of our stuff and eventually we all went back to our car for a breakfast. To clarify -- King Range is a bear area and it is actually illegal to carry food not packed in bear-resistant containers. Therefore we kept all our food locked in our car -- no need to invite a furry friend into your tent. We also kept out our various leisure items -- e.g. our camping chairs for me and Sid, and a portable dinner seat for Tommy. I must say that a child with a hippo appetite is a real blessing -- he would happily feed himself using own hands, sitting in his own seat, keeping a polite small talk with his parents, also breaking fast.

	Gee, a leaf. How does it taste?

	Our offspring transformed himself for a while into a desert tank.

We still had to do a second round to the beach -- to pack our tent. Tom got another chance to run around in a pebble paradise for toddlers. Same rule that applies to adult Hippo seems to cover to our little one -- he needs a thorough outing and feeding. Perfectly tired and substantially nourished Tommy then fell asleep in the car and slept until our next stop - Fort Bragg. There we had a late lunch at a nondescript diner. Tom, however, refused to return to his car seat encagement and had to be released. Jughandle Beach is a classical, sandy one, hence it offered another great baby attraction. On the far high tide line, sand formed a steep bank about a foot high, which Tom managed to attack for a half hour. He also liked to become a desert tank -- rushing through soft, deep sand, head over heels. It appears that he had learned to move in the sand -- this time he did not load his diaper with half of the beach like he used to do before. Exhausted again, he went back to sleep rather smoothly, waking up only after we reached another traffic jam at Santa Rosa, CA. We had counted with bad traffic, that's why we de-toured to Fort Bragg, hoping that we'd hit the one-oh-one after rush hour. Alas, two lanes had been insufficient in this area for decades (there was no accident, just too many cars), and we opted to find sanctuary in Petaluma again. We found it in the shape of Chinatown Restaurant, where we, despite being rather decimated, ate a great dinner. Petaluma seems to be a town of many great restaurants. We offered Tom some rice, which made him busy until we disposed of our own portions. When we were apologizing to the waitress for the mess Tommy had made, she showed us how to knead rice into small balls that kids manage to get in their mouths easier than individual grains.

Our last surprise awaited us at our car, when we returned there. Our wagon was carefully locked -- not counting, however, wide open door on the driver side. I think it illustrates our general state of mind and level of tiredness. Neither one of us would notice that open door before, and we left all our traveling stuff out on the seats and ready to grab, including our cameras (together a few thousands right there), my wallet (i.e. my ID and credit cards and cash), plus our complete camping equipment. One of many pleasant aspects of life in America is the fact, that we found everything on its place and untouched, although our car was parked on a dark bank branch lot, and we dined a block away.

Final assessment of this trip is positive, after all. I'm not sure whether Tom's beach attractions sufficiently had compensated his hassle of long traveling, but he cannot tell us yet, unfortunately. Or should I be glad that he cannot?

Copyright © 2004-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.