It was a cool and damp morning in Fortuna, but we Googled up a propane store to fill one of the tanks, and googled up an information store to fill our mind with information on the route we had in mind. Once we found out that it was very scenic (as was our guess - looking at it in Google Earth hereafter referred to as 'GE'), it was a bonus to find out that it was even paved! Since we had been to a gas store and a food store the day before, there was nothing to do but head out.
The road starts on the north end in a very historic Victorian town of Ferndale.
The road is indeed very winding and narrow, and the signs at the start had dire warnings about snow tires and chains!
It climbed about 2000' in the clouds, so I had to take GE and the info store's people's word that the scenery was nice. But there was no snow or anything in the snow family.
Eventually we came over the top and down to the coast in some very nice ranching country, and the weather cleared enough to see that there was indeed an ocean out there.
There was a cattle drive under way.
We found a nice ocean-front spot to camp just over the beach and settled in for the evening, but not before a good hike through the tide pools, watching the little sand crabs scramble and fall off the rocks as we approached!

Found a nice marker float off a net or trap of some sort. Will Google the number off it in the off chance that it will give clues as to it's origin.

I guess I should take this opportunity to apologize to the good folks of Chernoistochinsk, Sverdlovsk in the Russian Federation for not mentioning them in the list of exotic visitor origins. Oh ya, Deer Island, New Brunswick, too!!

This was the 7th night of the trip (I wonder if they know at home that I'm gone?) (Or if they would notice - if I didn't come back? :-)
What I was trying to say was that since there was no wi-fi for the second(?) time this trip, I was stuck in manual, analog mode in the morning, and my only wake-up call was watching the breakers crash on the rocks with the incoming tide - with my head still on the pillow! Gosh, sometimes you really have to rough it when you are traveling.
But the stars had appeared during the night, and the sun was shining brightly in the morning, exposing all the scenery to my bleary eyes. But a hot cup of coffee standing outside in the fresh sea air made it somewhat bearable.
Some deer appeared grazing on the hillside behind me, and an Alaskan air lines 747 cruised silently past just offshore.
I went for a long walk on the ever-narrowing beach and counted a number of different species, none of them species-at-risk.
I saw some Wilson's, a Spalding, and a 'whackit' - tennis balls. Bic, rossignol, and one unidentified - lighter. One Goodyear, and Modelo, Coors, and Bud light - beer cans. I also saw one grebe with an attitude, followed the tracks of what looked like a small cat, and some raccoon tracks.
You can really see the effects of global warming here (it was 8C overnight, if you are keeping track), because the ocean levels are really rising. Heck, some places I walked on dry sand last nite are completely covered in ocean this morning! Or maybe it's just the tides.
But by 11AM, I sensed that something was missing from this idyllic scene. Then I remembered! BREAKFAST!

For this entire side trip I have been using GE to great advantage! By maxing out the size of the buffer, you can save all the data on the hard drive for when you have no internet access. So, while in Fortuna, while walking about town or eating, I had the computer with Google Earth following the entire route, and saving all the terrain to memory. When actually on the road, I connect the GPS using the live-GPS feature and it shows my present location in high definition, and you can even tilt and rotate the view as you can when on line! So when driving, I knew when to expect every bend in the road, or river crossing, or potential viewpoint.
Almost like being at home with the big monitor - except for the sea air and the robins in the green grass.