The Bruzer Goes North
In 2016, I bought a 1976 FJ40. I had been waiting a long time for that. My first FJ40 came at sixteen, a 1969 olive-green model I negotiated down to fifteen hundred dollars with my father's help, painted an entire Victorian house to earn, and eventually sold when I left for college. My younger brother drove it in the interim. I have not fully forgiven myself for selling it.
The 1976 took two years of work and one extended negotiation with my wife before it was road-ready. The negotiation involved two bottles of wine and several hours of patience on her part. By noon the following day, I had the truck. I named it the Bruzer.
In June of 2019, I pointed it north on Highway 101 toward California's Lost Coast. It was the Bruzer's maiden voyage. I had recently swapped out the factory carburetor for a new fuel injection system that still needed hours of consistent driving to break in. The engine sputtered and choked for the first stretch of highway, then found its footing somewhere around Marin and settled into the kind of low, steady rumble that tells you a truck is happy to be working.
Three of us made the trip: my buddy “Hack” in the passenger seat of the FJ40, and our friend Matt running ahead in his Toyota Tundra carrying most of the gear. Two hundred miles north to Shelter Cove, then down the coast to a beach most Californians have never heard of, and even fewer have visited.
Garberville and the Guitar
We stopped for lunch in Garberville, a small town on the Eel River that has been named for eels it does not actually contain. Early European settlers traded a frying pan to a group of Wiyot fishermen for a large number of Pacific lampreys, which they called eels. The name stuck. The Sinkyone people had been there for centuries before any of that.
Garberville is the kind of town that does not try to be anything other than what it is, which is part of its appeal. We ate, stretched, and kept moving.
Shelter Cove turned out to be extremely windy. We parked the trucks as windbreaks and rigged tarps, which worked well enough. That evening, we wandered over to Mario's Bar and Grill on the cliff above the cove. Mario's is more bar than grill, and rough around the edges in a way that suits the location perfectly. A dozen or so bikers and a handful of locals watched us find our seats with the particular attentiveness of people who do not see many newcomers.
Hack reached back, lifted an old guitar off the wall behind our table, and started playing. Sweet Home Alabama. Brown Eyed Girl. The Gambler. Within a few songs, the room had warmed considerably. That is one of the things about music in a room of strangers: it bypasses the usual friction. By the time we left, the bikers were nodding at us like old friends.
The Road That Shakes People Up
The Lost Coast gets its name from what is not there. The coastal mountains along this stretch of Northern California are too steep, the terrain too unstable, for the state highway system to run a road through. So there is none. The result is the most remote and undeveloped section of the California coastline. This place has stayed largely as it was because connecting it to everything else proved too expensive.
Usal Road is what remains. Twelve miles, tight and winding, steep in sections, rutted throughout, with few places to back up or turn around if you misjudge something. A park ranger once described it this way: the road shakes people up and should be a gated trail instead of a county road.
I read that quote before we left and filed it under reasons to go.
Matt's Tundra handled it without complaint. The short wheelbase of the Bruzer made the deep ruts manageable in a way that a longer vehicle would not have. We moved slowly, deliberately, reading the road ahead at each bend. Previous off-roaders had cut paths through downed trees where needed. The whole twelve miles took the better part of the morning.
We had hoped to push further south to Needle Rock and camp at Bear Harbor, one of the more remote sites on the entire coast. The road was closed for repairs. We turned toward Usal Beach instead, which turned out to be exactly the right place to end up.
Usal Beach
Usal Beach is a primitive campsite: no showers, no developed water source, one crude outhouse, first-come. We arrived early on Saturday afternoon with a good selection of spots and chose a site along the bank of Usal Creek with a clear view of the Pacific. The beach itself is tucked at the base of the mountains, the kind of place that takes genuine effort to reach and rewards that effort immediately upon arrival.
The Roosevelt Elk were the thing we were not fully prepared for.
At one point, the elk population along the Lost Coast had fallen to only a few hundred animals. Conservation efforts over decades brought them back, and they now number in the thousands. They move through the campsite and the creek meadow in the early morning and late evening, unhurried, enormous, indifferent to the humans in their path. You do not fully appreciate the scale of a Roosevelt Elk until one is fifteen feet away browsing the grass while you are trying to make coffee.
On Sunday morning, I woke to a munching sound about fifteen feet from the tent. I had pitched camp directly on the elk's daily route without knowing it. I lay still and listened to them move through, and thought that of all the ways to start a morning, this was among the better ones.
The Return
We packed on Sunday morning without hurrying. Drove Usal Creek a few times because we could. Then I headed south on Usal Road toward Highway 1, which, on this side of the trip, is not nearly as demanding as the northern approach. The road climbs high above the Pacific before descending to the pavement, and from that elevation, you can see why people have been trying to reach this coastline for a long time. The view earns the drive.
The Bruzer ran the whole trip without complaint. The fuel injection system found its rhythm somewhere on the Usal Road, settled in, and did not miss a beat. A maiden voyage is meant to reveal what a vehicle is made of. This one passed.
What I keep coming back to is the ranger's description: the road shakes people up. That is not a warning. That is the premise. The Lost Coast exists because getting there requires something from you. The mountains kept the highway out, and in doing so kept everything the highway brings with it. The elk are there because the terrain is difficult. The quiet is there for the same reason.
Some places ask something of you before they let you in. The ones that do are usually worth it.