I launched by 8:30 AM again and turned south. The couple I had seen earlier had disappeared without walking past me so I thought they were illegally camping like me. But when I passed the place where I thought they would be I found the end of a Redwood Park trail to the beach. So they must have walked back up after sunset. I passed Mussel Point where I had thought about camping and discovered that this point was a dike cutting off the beach that continued all the way down to the Redwood Creek Fishing Access. As near as I can tell "Fishing Access" up here in Del Norte or Humbolt is a sign that means "OK To Drive Your Pickup Truck On The Beach". I saw trucks on the beach right in front of the Redwood Parks Information Building, so the rangers seem to allow this behavior. I saw trucks on both sides of Mussel Point and it occurred to me if they were to get rid of this obstruction, they could drive their trucks for almost 30 kilometers on the beach without having to drive back onto a road. Oooee! Now that is country living.
I recognized Redwood Creek by the topology of the land before I figured out the lay of the water. This suggests to me the superiority of USGS maps over NOAA charts for near-shore paddling. The waves in front of Redwood Creek and the Redwood Park Information Center were not as dumpy as when I scouted this beach from the road a few days ago. Probably because the tide was higher then. But I kept going looking for better places. Freshwater Lagoon is south of the creek and was created by building a levee for Highway 101. Apparently having salt water wash over the highway during storms is not allowed so this lagoon eventually became fresh. Nearby Stone Lagoon has remained salty. I had trouble with sleeper waves in front of Freshwater Lagoon and was driven farther and farther from shore. One large wave rose up way offshore from me and I paddled as hard as I could to turn the boat. I turned far enough paddling only on the left until I got one stroke on the right as the wave broke over me. I barely kept the boat upright and then had to work hard to paddle over the next two waves. I had kept my sunglasses dry and salt-free for two days and now I had to start licking and dipping them to keep them clear again.
I went around the point to see the beach in front of Stone Lagoon. Two surfers were walking down the beach and watching them launch over the waves told me enough that I didn't have to try out a landing myself. I could launch here to continue my coverage of Humbolt County one day. I turned back and started the return trip to the Redwood Hostel. To avoid the big sleeper waves off Freshwater Lagoon I went far from shore. This set me up to go around all the big rocks offshore that I had missed on the trip down.
As I passed Mussel Point on the way north a northwest wind came up and made paddling difficult. Whitecaps started to develop so I knew this was a 12 knot wind or worse and this would make going north difficult. I decided to work hard and get back to my last camp-spot. Puffy clouds low overhead raced over my head going the other way, followed by a curved solid line of cloud. Behind that there were no more clouds. As I landed for lunch this solid line of cloud across the sky passed over me and the wind died down to 5 knots and the whitecaps disappeared. I had been thinking of camping again and waiting for the calm time the next morning to beat the wind. But since there was so little wind again I jumped back in the water after lunch and raced north past the length of Gold Bluff Beach.
I followed a group of sea lions working the beach, at least three of them. They never noticed I was following them until a group of rocks forced them to swim in front of me and they splashed water in their hurry to get away, then barked at me. When I got to the north third of the beach that had been dumpy before, I thought I could get close to shore which would make passing the time easier. But the water for quite a ways out to sea had turned choppy and muddy brown here, as if the water was shallow enough for the wind waves to pull mud up from the bottom. I could see a line out to sea where the water turned dark green again. Looking out to sea at this line I noticed that the whitecaps had started up again. The wind had crept up over 12 knots against me once more.
I worked my way against the wind up to Johnson's Creek and made an easy landing behind a rock. What a dump this beach was! The easy access for "fisherman" had allowed cars to drive all over the beach and mark up the sand like a motor-cross raceway. The beach was very wide where it came out to the rocks, over 200 meters. I walked across to look at the lagoon where the creek seeped into the sand. I didn't want to camp out on this motor-cross raceway. I didn't want to drag my boat across to the cliffs or leave it near the water while I camped over there. I didn't particularly want to paddle into the wind any more either but this is what I did. I headed north towards the nice little pocket beach near Split Rock I had landed on for lunch the day before. This made the day a very long hard one, 42 kilometers with quite a bit of it into a headwind. I landed at my lunch spot and checked it out for camping.
It was even better than I remembered. A high berm against the cliff put my tent and kayak well above the high tide in the middle of the night. From there I looked across 20 meters of sand to a ring of monoliths, one 30 meters tall, that were holding back the sea and creating the conditions to hold all the sand in this place. A hollow in one of the rocks boomed like a not-so distant cannon every time the swell hit it correctly. To my right I could see the tall monolith of Split Rock. The sun set between my monoliths as I ate dinner, then the sky turned orange and lavender colors as the crescent moon appeared low over the ocean. I started a small campfire of driftwood and after dark wrote the notes for this journal entry by firelight. Then I stayed up late basking in the warmth of the coals and staring at the patterns in them.
