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a county
road, I no faith in its abilities to route me out of this area
on anything less than a four wheel drive trail. Like a
moron, I had forgotten to |
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Garmin's version of a county
road |
to pack to my hardcopy maps in my haste of getting on
the road that morning.
I had two options,
first, ride all the way back to Caliente and Highway 93.
Although it was only 30 miles away, it would take significantly
longer to negotiate the sandy sections of the road in the dark, and
I would still be almost 200 miles away from Primm. My second
option was to backtrack 6 miles to the fork in the road and head
east to wherever. I had a fairly good (and later to discover
correct) feeling that this was the actual Carp/ Elgin road anyway.
I opted for the second option, since once/ if I
reached I-15, I would only be 100 miles from Primm, and I at this
point I really didn't feel like riding in the sand at night. I
spent about 10 minutes trying to keep my bike upright while I turned
it around on the steep grade and then
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began the trek back to the fork in the road.
The bike handled the grade much better in the downhill mode and I
was back to the main road within a half hour.
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back to the fork, my GPS was still telling me to go back and
take the trail I had just come from, regardless if I told it to
calculate the fastest or shortest route. I had plenty of
water |
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Hmmm, I-15 is just over
those mountains, only if I had my TKC-80s! |
and had my golf clubs, so I took the east fork of the
road and hoped for the best.
To my dismay,
there was no relief from the sand, as the road climbed up the bottom
of a wash with lots of loose gravel and sand, but it wasn't as bad
as the deep sand I had encountered in the bottom of Meadow Valley.
After about 10 miles, my GPS finally accepted the fact that I wasn't
going to make a U-turn, and calculated a route along the road I was
on. I was relieved to see that my hunch that this was the
Carp/ Elgin road was correct and I was only 30 miles from I-15.
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