I am something of a map nerd. Not an especially expert map nerd, but a map nerd nonetheless.
Several years ago we took our daughter to stay with some friends in Modesto. Since we were living in Western Nevada (the northern part of the state, Reno/Tahoe area, is actually 90 miles west of Los Angeles), that trip took us through Yosemite.
I spent a long time going over my DeLorme computer maps and making sure I had the route, and alternatives, all be memorized. One of the roads I wanted to take was the Old Yosemite Highway. It's one of the very, very few privately funded highways ever built in the US. It isn't much used, but still I wanted to see the scenery along that drive.
On the trip down and back when we dropped her off, I never did find any signage indicating the Old Yosemite Highway, so I said "meh" and stuck to the regular roads.
When we went back for her a few weeks later, we still didn't see any signage, but on the return trip, I noticed a sign at a fork in the road, a sign that couldn't be seen traveling west, but if you were alert it caught your vision traveling east. Aha! I knew the name of that branch road from studying the maps, and knew that it connected to the Old Road. Woo Hoo!
Off we went down the right fork.
The road was paved. For about a half mile. Maybe.
And then it was gravel. Mostly.
And then it was dirt. For a few miles.
And then it was . . . interesting. Rocks. Big ones. Embedded. Too big to remove without heavy equipment and dynamite. The road surface had evidently, at one time, been slightly above the boulders now exposed by erosion. Roots. Trees which had been smaller -- or not there at all -- had elaborately developed root systems which now encroached, in a big way, upon the road surface.
As the miles went (slowly) on, the road increasingly became a carnival ride. With cliffs. Oh, true, we had a hell of a view. You could just look off to the right -- over the cliff edge -- at that unbelievable valley of trees and formations. But in my wife's universe, there was no view. Only cliffs. There are stories and sagas about my wife and cliffs. I will, perhaps, relate them another time.
And so it was, about fourteen miles in, that my wife, looking out the windows of the mini-van at the cows surrounding us, and severely pot-holed road festooned in cow pies, and the unexpected sudden forks (plural) in the road, inquired -- rather calmly, all things considered, whether we were, indeed, on the right road. A forgivable question, under the circumstances. All things considered. I was absolutely not in the mood to have it be the wrong road, or have to retrace the aforementioned fourteen miles back to the first fork. I needed confirmation that my manly navigation skills were intact.
It was at this point that I finally deployed my hole card: a DeLorme LT20 USB-tethered GPS puck, with companion software on my little dinky Lifebook notebook computer. After waking up the laptop (30 seconds), connecting the GPS puck (15 seconds), activating GPS mode in Topo USA (another 15 seconds), and after yet a further 30 seconds acquiring enough signals from the satellite constellation, a comforting green dot appeared . . . exactly where I imagined we ought to be. We were a mere four miles from rejoining the main road.
Once we got back to the main road, it was obvious why we had not seen the signage for Old Yosemite Highway: a) the connection was off on a side road from the recently reworked main highway, and b) the pretty green highway signs pointedly ignored even the idea that there might be such a connection. And with good reason, I might add. If some tourist got the idea that there was a quaint, historic (and scenic) old highway "off that-away" the friendly ranger folk would have to lay on a whole crew whose job it would be to save those tourists from scary cliffs and boulders and roots and ruts (and cows, actually).
I'm glad we took that side trip, glad that we got through it okay, and glad I discovered the value of GPS before GPS was cool.
On the other hand . . .
I have absolutely no problem understanding how a series of "reasonable" decisions, based on "reasonable" assumptions, based on a clearly drawn line on a pretty-much-accurate map, could lead a party of tourists into hazard of life and limb.
My decision to follow the Old Road seemed quite reasonable at first, and my repeated assurances to my wife (and myself) that the road "wasn't really that bad yet" seemed harmless enough. There was no annotation in the mapping software that indicated the quality of the road might be rated as "hazardous - Jeeps only." It was just a line. And it was a better line than the FS[nn] roads (forest service maintenance/fire roads) near it.
I have since become much more circumspect about following maps or GPS blips and rationalizing terrain-as-road. I always make sure I'm clear to turn around, have enough fuel to duplicate the trip in, and respect the terrain.
If the terrain looks like it's got the potential for high-centering, tire rupturing, axle burying, or [insert bad thing here], I bow to the terrain gods and add it to my list of "places to go when I have enough Jeep."
I feel for the Germans. I can understand how it would be easy to fail to grasp the size of Death Valley -- almost the size of Connecticut -- until it was just too late.
Me, I grew up in areas near the desert and visited many of those vast places as a kid. I knew how getting lost out there could turn out. Someone growing up in Germany? I can completely understand the disconnect.
On the Nevada side, in and around Beatty, there's no shortage of warnings and signposts offering "hey, you could die out there" advice. They came in from the Cali side, so I dunno.
Sux though.
Interesting that there were still people who couldn't let it go all those years later. Nothing boring about that story.
