Ahhh, another relaxing, quiet Sunday afternoon. Just what we needed. With how hectic this summer has been and the past two weeks in particular, a family drive sounded like a brilliant idea. BRILLIANT IDEA!!
We headed up American Fork Canyon, with the plan to do our usual Alpine Loop run. We decided to take a little detour and head towards Granite Flats, just to see the little reservoir. As we were turning around in the parking lot, Felix said, "Hey do you want to go down that road a little ways?" Sure, why not. It was rocky, bumpy and I had abdominal surgery 2 weeks ago, but SURE, let's do it.
We began to meander down the very rocky, very bumpy road and we turned it into an adventure by telling the kids we were on the lookout for the PERFECT camping spot. Everyone had their eyes peeled and we were finding all sorts of that beautiful nature stuff to point out to one another.
After about 45 minutes (maybe an hour), the roads got to be very narrow. Very few cars, and the only ones we did see were either Jeeps or those little Polaris, Honda 4 wheel drive golf carts. At first it was no big deal to pull off to one side and let the car on the outside pass. That is until we were on the outside, about 1000 up and I discovered my irrational fear of heights and falling to my death one death spiral down the canyon after another. Whatever.
After about the third time, I started bracing myself everytime we saw someone coming in the opposite direction. I pretty much stopped doing the whole courtesy wave thing because I decided everyone that was up here was either crazy or stupid...us included. I was still panicking (on the inside because I didn't want to freak the kids) even when we were only maybe 500 feet up from certain death.
After hour number two, we took a quick pit stop so the boys could christen the tires with their bodily fluids, while we girls suffered in silence. About 15 minutes later, we finally saw our first sign in a good solid hour. It had letters and arrows and everything! One arrow pointed to Midway, the other pointed to Cascade Springs. We took a quick poll and Cascade Springs won. There was a method behind this madness...the road went down. We were ready to go DOWN. Felix voiced his opinion that we should take the other road, but we were a democratic car at that point and the DOWNs had it. (Later on we would discover how absolutely right Felix was, and how ABSOLUTELY wrong the rest of the car was).
We headed down for some time and the road got narrower and narrower and narrower. Ummmm, just so you know, Durangos are VERY WIDE. We had a lovely view of DOOM and DESTRUCTION on one side and on the other we could have rolled our windows down and licked the mountain. Finally we reached an area where there was ALMOST a whole lane of road.
And around the corner came flying a couple of ATVs. Quick question...why would you ride an ATV with a cigarette in the middle of the forest? Just curious.
So we continued on our trek, we were very exited about all of our butterfly sightings and then the dirt turned red. And then we were back on rocks at a four way crossing. We stopped...we looked...we pondered. Two roads went down, one went up. Abandoning my previous theory of DOWN, I said the last sign we saw said this way to Cascade Springs. If we were supposed to turn, wouldn't there be another sign? So I won the battle and we went up. About 15 minutes later we came to a round about type of thing. And we all lost it. We had been in the car for almost three hours. We had no idea where we were, and no idea how to get out of where we were.
We decided to press forward. Nothing SCREAMS stress like a narrow road, trees and bushes careening into the car and looking down, very, very down. Then we came out of the trees, the kids started crying and we realized our car might be too wide for the bloody road. Okay, it was too wide for the bloody road. We paused and pressed on. I watched on one side, Felix watched the other, realized not the entire tire was on the road. GROOVY. Then we had the fun experience of driving on the side of the mountain to avoid a boulder, and yes, I was totally doing the whole 'Speed' (the movie) thing of everyone lean to the side so we don't tip over thing. About 2 minutes later we came to a switchback and 2 minutes after that we were on a paved road.
Two minutes after that we were at Cascade Springs. HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH.
Lessons Learned
1. Don't take the family off-roading (especially the 84 year old grandma...SO WAY NOT FAIR to her when it is a surprise).
2. Durangos are not good off roading cars...too big.
3. I don't like heights unless I am in a controlled roller coaster type environment.
4. ADVENTURE SUCKS!!!!!
5. Being bland and boring really works for me.
2 comments:
thanks! you totally came through for me again. :) I continue to live my adventures the safe way - by reading your experience.
that is hilarious. kind of, if you weren't there i guess. i had a similar experience once, with 6 kids in my van. that was fun.
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