Now That's a Bad Road

We are not yet finished hiking Dean's Fork. We're about two miles up the six-mile trace. Finally, we reached the scene of my automotive humiliation. Shila points to where my driver's side wheel dropped. It was not good. There is about a four-foot sheer drop below it, enough to roll the new 'baru. The tire track you see is from the right front wheel. It was only by dint of mighty control that I did not leave a big pile of Zick scat at this place.



And the road got a little worse,

and a little worse...

and then it got baaaad

and baaader

and after that, as forgotten traces will, it got kind of ridiculous

but all along Shila was saying, "Oh, I could get my RAV-4 through this. I'd put one wheel here and one wheel here..." and I was laughing at her and with each water hazard we'd assess the best path through, as if we'd EVER bring a car up here again...

not bloody likely...but it's fun to imagine how you'd do it. We began to understand, perhaps a tiny glimmer, the people who go fourwheelin' on weekends for fun...there's always that possibility that your vehicle will go in up to its steering wheel and never be seen again, and isn't that a thrill?
until we reached the point where we were both just helpless with laughter imagining ourselfs trying to get through the next hazard

and Shila even said she could do this one, but then we found THIS ONE

and it was a foot deep, and whoops! there was a tail light from some poor schnook who thought he could make it, for we know it had to be a man...

When we reached the first house on the other side of all this, the only inhabited house on the whole road, in fact, we talked with Harvey, and he said,

"You know, every weekend I see these people in these little Ford Fiestas go by my place, headed on down the road, and I never see them coming back."

To which I said,

"Oh, that explains all the skeletons."

So the township's response to having to drag all those people and their Ford Fiestas out of there is putting a sign at the better-traveled end of Dean's Fork, announcing some sort of official "closure" of the road, which of course is closed only by virtue of the fact that you will drown before you get out to the other side.

Shila and I just returned from another expotition, and we found mainly poop, but it was interesting poop. That will have to wait until we're finished with Dean's Fork. Because we're not done yet.