The Shortest Route May Not Be The Best           

By John W. Vander Velden

I’ll admit it. I’ve gotten lazy.

I don’t always pour over maps, plotting courses, writing down driving directions anymore. Why should I? I have a smart phone. So heading out to Crisp Point on a mid- July morning, Google would be our guide. Two and a half hours we were told, mostly north from our hotel in St. Ignace an easy drive to be sure. I had read that the lighthouse was out of the way, that several miles of back, read dirt, road remained in our path.

Nearly all the highways in the Upper Peninsula are great, so we moved along on an overcast misty morning. But blue skies and sun were promised to arrive by noon, so I had timed our departure accordingly.

Zipping down Highway 123 Jackie said, “Alexa says we needed to turn off there.” She pointed to the right as we whizzed past what certainly did not look like a road.

I know Google’s voice isn’t Alexa, wrong trademark, but we call the female sounding voice that all the same.

But back to the story. All I had seen of the supposed road was a lane with a post standing near the highway. A post with about fifteen boards nailed to it. Each a different color of faded, peeling paint, which pointed to what seemed a path going to the north and through the trees.

It can’t be, my thought, but Alexa seemed confident, well she always does, so I found a place to turn around and guided Pearl, onto the road Alexia had chosen for us. Oh, if you didn’t know Jackie named her Jeep Renegade Pearl. No, we don’t have a birth certificate, if we did it’d be in Italian and couldn’t read it anyway, but the name seems to fit our vehicle.

This was not a paved road. It was not a gravel road. It was a dirt road, mostly sand. Now let’s add to this the fact that it had rained, seriously, sometime during the night before. So that made this lane a mud road, more so in some places than others. There were places the road was underwater. Not flowing water you understand, just deep puddles that reached from berm to berm.

I do not drive headlong through water, standing or otherwise. I paused a second before carefully plodding through what seemed the shallowest portion, along the left edge of the road. No problem. Pearl seemed pleased with herself. Jackie was concerned!

We continued on crossing several water holes, mud puddles, or lakes, choose you own descriptors, when we reached a turnoff, or so Alexia demanded. Barriers prevents our pleasing the voice within Jackie’s phone, for the road had been closed for reconstruction. That blocked turnoff was strangely comforting. The silent bright yellow trucks lined up along Farm Trail Road seemed to prove that we were indeed on a maintained roadway, instead of just on some strange trek into the boonies created by the minds of a machine half a world away.

We pressed on.

The road grew narrower as we continued. As we went, only trees could be seen, though the post with the pointed signs at the highway might indicate that people lived along that way, we saw no houses. Only a few scattered lanes, perhaps driveways, which emptied onto the continually narrowing way we drove. Coming upon a place where the road was, how can I say it, softer, or muddy, with some serious ruts that seemed to scream, “driver beware”, gave me another concerning situation. Hmm... Dialed the 4wdr control to mud and eased into the quagmire. I can’t be certain but as we passed through that obstacle cutting our own ruts, the sound of Pearl’s engine seemed to be a bit like music. It was as if our little Jeep was singing a portion of an Italian Opera. A delightful tune that told us, no worries I got this. She never spun a wheel!

Some miles later, the closed section of Farm Trail Road joined us and Alexa seemed to relax a bit. She can get a bit tedious. Onward we moved confident that though the road was now just one lane, one narrow lane, one very narrow lane, that our destination was attainable. Jackie said, “Soon we reach a very tight right turn. We did, and found a road grader waiting for better conditions wedged at the road’s edge.

“Alexa says it’s still fifteen miles...”

“Say what!” I exclaimed. “Fifteen more miles.” I stopped. Looked down the road, and wondered.

I grabbed my own phone and found we had no cell service. Hmmmmmm.... The branches along the road now nearly touched Pearl. Would the road that continually narrowed get suddenly wider...probably not? Fifteen miles.

Enough already. I turned around.

Without cell service my mind began to run wild. Could we mere humans be able to find our way back to civilization, or would we be guests, one day, on one of the morning network shows.

Today’s we are so happy to have Jackie and John Vander Velden who were lost in the wilds of Upper Peninsula Michigan. They survived forty days living off wild berries, tree bark, and a bottle of water. I shook my head and returned to the task at hand.

I followed the tire tracks on the road, our tracks, the only tracks. That was until we met some bold off roaders mudding our way. They were so kind as to squeeze off the road in one of the rare wider portions to allow us to slip passed.

Through the mud. Through the water. Between the millions of trees. It was ten miles before we reached the strange post with all the pointed boards, and glad of it.

Thirteen miles further on Highway 123 we came to a sign pointing the way to Crisp Point Lighthouse. And yes it was a dirt road. But it was nineteen miles of WIDER dirt road with tire tracks that proved other human had driven the road THAT DAY. The puddles were shallower, the road firmer, survival seemed likely. So much for being guests on morning TV, but I can live without that.

(1025 Words) 8-15-2019