Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
Traveling America's backroads, road trip experts - Noah and Noodles - explore fascinating locations overlooked while traveling.
Living out of a van, they unravel the - often shocking - story behind each neglected story or location.
If you love travel, exploration and unique locations - join us on the road!
Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
Van Life Diaries - The Lost Coast: California's Last Wilderness
A singular stretch of untamed wilderness lines Calirfonia's Northern Coast.
A landscape so rugged and dramatic that the state's infamous 'route one' avoids it's sheer cliffs and crashing waves.
My dog Noodles and I spend three days along this coast - while there we hear a love story.
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We answer listener questions at the end, which include:
- How do you know where you're going next?
- Does your van get messy?
- Was there anything that surprised you in researching Plymouth Rock?
- What cryptid are you most scared of?
Recommendations:
Black Sands Beach near Shelter Cove:
https://sheltercovecalifornia.com/the-lost-coast-trail
Beer and Food:
Backpacking for the brave - make sure you reserve in advance:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/lost-coast-trail-mattole-to-black-sands-beach
Works Cited:
https://www.savetheredwoods.org/project/lost-coast-redwoods/
https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=28172
https://www.aspireadventurerunning.com/the-lost-coast-the-ancestral-lands-of-the-sinkyone-people/
https://sheltercovecalifornia.com/the-lost-coast-trail
https://michaelbass.media/THE-LOST-COAST
https://www.visitredwoods.com/listing/shelter-cove-on-the-lost-coast/138/
https://www.visitcalifornia.com/experience/lost-coast/
Noah and Noodles here!
We want to extend a heartfelt thanks to every listener of Backroad Odyssey.
Your support fuels our passion and inspires us to keep sharing stories and discover overlooked locations.
Follow each adventure visually at:
https://www.instagram.com/backroadsodyssey/
Cruisin' down the street. I wonder where this road would lead. So many possibilities. Care to share what you think. Oh, noodle Dolls, what do you see? Back Road Odyssey.
Speaker 1:This coast is wild, unpredictable, untouched. Here, crashing waves greet scaling mountains, redwood giants touch the sky. This is one of California's last remaining wildernesses. This is one of California's last remaining wildernesses. This right here is the Lost Coast. Welcome to Van Life Diaries. I'm your host, noah, joined as always by my dog and co-host, noodles the Woodle. If you've been with the show, welcome back. Always good to have you. If you're new here, welcome. Thanks for traveling with us Today in classic Van Life Diary fashion.
Speaker 1:The show will be relatively unscripted, but interesting Nonetheless, I assure you, because today we dive deep into California's last remaining coastal wilderness. Dive deep into California's last remaining coastal wilderness, the Lost Coast, a landscape so rugged, so dramatic that California's mighty Route 1 was forced to diverge eastward. We'll also answer listener questions at the end, as is tradition in every Van Life Diaries, but for now, noodles and I drive the winding roads. We follow the smell of the Pacific to our destination today Shelter Cove, which lies at the southernmost point of the Lost Coast in Northern California. In the three days we spend there, we hike along the sea, research the area's history and hear an unexpected love story that I've yet to forget and don't think I ever will. Waves, like words, trickle A stream along the mountain to the sea, pooling there. A field of flowers flow, flowing you into me, alright. So this is easily one of the windiest, one of the most unpredictable roads I've ever driven, but then it wouldn't be where we're going to if it was not. We, of course, are talking about the Lost Coast. Noodles and I will base ourselves for the next three days in Shelter Cove. It's a small town of something like 700 people at the southernmost point of the Lost Coast.
Speaker 1:Where else do we start with this rugged, often not known piece of land in Northern California? But the beginning? For thousands of years, the Sinkion people culled the rugged coastlands extending from the ocean to the south fork of the Eel River. Home Located some 200 miles north of modern San Francisco. The land's continued health remained a priority for the Sinkion people. They would rotationally burn coastal prairies and woodlands, leave the larger redwoods be generally and sustainably hunt and forage both in the rough sea below and within their forested mountains above. But they weren't entirely unique In those days, the length of the California coast was unspoiled, unaltered. So there were many with this mindset. But when gold is discovered in California, this long stretch of California wilderness begins to wither, valley by valley, shore by shore, inching its way north.
Speaker 1:We've been here for two days so far. I've never experienced simultaneously such solitude and felt like so much is going on. A lot's happened. Noodles ate a crab, barked at sea lions. We went for a few hikes, walked the nearby black sand beach. I'd love to talk at length about any one of those, but I had a conversation yesterday that I feel I have to share.
Speaker 1:So Noodles and I were walking, it was slightly foggy, wet, and a local comes up to us and starts to talk. I reckon she doesn't see many visitors here, but we talk and I tell her why I'm here, I ask her about herself and she goes on to tell this story, the story about how her and her husband of some 50 years ended up here in this cut-off town of something like 700. She says this you know, I've always loved the mountains. I grew up in Colorado. They always make me feel at home. I knew eventually I'd like to end up by some mountains and my husband always preferred, always loved the sea and he wanted to end up by the sea. That's where he felt he had to be. Then she takes a pause and she looks at me and says when it came to retire we tried to look for both. And here we are in Shelter Cove. I have my mountains, he has his sea. It was work, but we're happy here. She then said goodbye, leaving Noodles and I to watch her as she faded into the fog in her light blue coat. Called by her song, we followed. We came. A cove by any other name would a shelter remain? The glint of gold always writes a story we're all too familiar with.
Speaker 1:At this point, the Sinkiana pushed off their land violently and fatally in many cases, as commercial logging ensues in the name of progress. By 1965, percent of the once two million acres of old-growth Californian redwoods remain Somehow someway. The lost coast remains relatively unaltered to the north. From 1850, when Shelter Cove was founded onwards, the land in Northern California, originally inhabited by the Cinquean, changes hands frequently. As the land passes from company to company, from person to person, a consensus is reached this land is too remote, too rugged to be practical or profitable. Simultaneously, by 1975, a latent environmental movement opposing logging operations moving towards the coast begins to surface. 1975 sees the creation of Sineon Wilderness State Park, just south of Modern Shelter Cove. A series of lawsuits and conservation land grabs around the area later ensue, and conservation land grabs around the area later in soon, with the help, among others, of Save, the Redwoods League and the intertribal Cinquean Wilderness Council. So at this time conservation is winning.
Speaker 1:But the final nail in the establishment of California's lost coast isn't either of those things. It comes with the completion of California's Route 1 in 1937. It's simply too hard, too expensive to continue the highway at that point. And it's at this point in the 30s, when the now inaccessible, economically inactive land is depopulated. Everybody leaves. This is one of California's last remaining wildernesses. This right here is the Lost Coast.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm sitting here, a mountain behind me, the Pacific in front, seals barking in the distance, tempting noodles to do the same. Any direction you look is scenic. It's virtually unaltered, uninhabited. I've been here three days now and I've finally got some thoughts. Three days now and I've finally got I've got some thoughts.
Speaker 1:Um so when I first got here I thought, looking around at this pristine landscape, that shelter cove didn't really fit in. It felt out of place in this vast wilderness here. But then I remembered how hard it was to get here with the van, but also just generally it's hard to get here With the van, but also just generally it's hard to get here the winding roads, the long drives. And I was left with one unavoidable fact really Anyone who is here has to want to come here. They have to want to be here. No one has ever, nor will they ever, stumble upon Shelter Cove or stumble upon the Lost Coast. It's impossible. You have to want to come here. You have to go out of your way to view the mountains you love, go out of your way to see the sea every morning and this, for my new local friend and her husband, is undeniably true. It's what they did. It would in so many ways be easier for both of them to live somewhere else, but to experience this unparalleled blending of mountains, a forest of sea without developments, a forest of sea without developments, without crowds, that's a price that to some people, is worth paying. Yet this one is yours and this one is mine, both of them ours. How could we not stay and sit and spend and feel our final hours? This coast is wild, unpredictable, untouched. Here, crashing waves greet scaling mountains, redwood giants touch the sky. This is one of California's last remaining wildernesses. To get here to appreciate it, you've got to treat it as such.
Speaker 1:I have some final thoughts and a story at the end, but for now let's get to listener questions. How do you decide where you're going next? Great question, thank you. It always starts with weather. It really always does. If it's going to be sunny for my solar, if it's going to be cold, hot, I want me and Noodles to be comfortable in the van. I don't want to encounter storms or anything like that. So it starts with weather. But then I think about what I'd find interesting and what I think you'd find interesting as well. I want to kind of tell stories, share locations that people overlook, and I look for those that people overlook and I look for those. I use an app called Road Trippers, among other things, to find these locations, these stories, and I go from there. But it always starts with the weather.
Speaker 1:Does your van get messy? For sure it does. It's my studio, it's my home, my kitchen, everything. And with such a small space, the moment you put anything anywhere, it becomes messy. I try to clean it. Every time I go to a spot, a location, I clean it up, I organize, but it's hard. You know it's a small space and yeah, yeah, any video you see of these van life people, rv people, who have pristine looking places is not the reality of it, unless you know they're much better and more cleanly and on top of it than I am, which could be the case, I don't know, but yeah, it gets messy for sure.
Speaker 1:Was there anything that surprised you in researching the story of Plymouth Rock? I don't know, but yeah, it gets messy for sure. Was there anything that surprised you in researching the story of Plymouth Rock? I mean, first of all, I didn't expect it to be a true story. I've heard throughout my life that the rock is more symbolic than anything, so I don't know if anything surprised me that much. But what interested me a lot and maybe surprised me a little bit, is the fact that the Anglican church, specifically, is an extension of the monarchy and vice versa, and consequently was used as a form of political control to keep everybody in line with. You know, morally, but also politically, what was going on within England people to try to get out of England. Because of that, I'd say, that interested me a lot and the extent of that, I guess, did surprise me. So, yeah, more than anything, that surprised me the most, that would not have been a fun time to live, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:What cryptid are you most scared of? We've been doing a lot of cryptid episodes. I had this idea, and reach out to me if you have any recommendations backroadodysseypod at gmailcom. I had this idea of doing a series on every cryptid for every state. So if you have any recs, reach out to me. But going back to what you asked, so, what cryptid am I most scared of? Probably like the psychedelic cryptids you know, like Mothman, who aren't necessarily like physically going to come and get you. Yeah, so I don't know if I could say a specific one, but anything that's you know, got mind powers or anything like that. Again, hey, reach out to me. Backroadodysseypod at gmailcom. Would love to hear from you. Would love to do an episode dot com. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to do an episode. It's Noah here. Thanks for traveling with us today.
Speaker 1:First I'd like to say this California has something like 40 million people. I'd been through all the major cities. I'd been kind of peopled out and it's a good feeling when I was able to venture to the lost coast, to be in a landscape that seems impenetrable, untouched Nature is in charge there right and that felt fantastic, especially after being in the southern part of California, which I enjoyed tremendously too, but to feel that solitude was really special. I have some recommendations. So there's a beautiful black sand rock, sand slash rock beach that's nearby Shelter Cove. Jippo Ale Mill has good food and beer in Shelter Cove, and the Lost Coast Trail is a three, four day hike that I would have loved to do but couldn't at the time. It either starts or ends at Shelter Cove, just east of Shelter Cove, depending on your preference, so check that out.
Speaker 1:I will add links in the show notes to each one of those. It was at the Black Sand Beach, actually with noodles, and that's where she ate a live crab. So that was. That's not really a story, but that did happen. I'd also like to thank the author of the poem read throughout the episode today, christian Collado, a Chicago author, voice actor and a good friend. So thank you to Christian and, if you find value in the show, if you'd like to see us continue to improve rating and subscribing is the best way that you can help Noodles and I do that, so I really appreciate every second you spend listening, and if you rate or subscribe, that's great as well. Thanks for joining us in the van just for a little bit. Be good to each other. Where to next?
