Winter Road and Adventures in Detours

On a field mission to drop of equipment at Cataract and see if all the spring weather and rain had resulted in an interesting flow at Monora, I set out on my usual route north up Mississauga Rd. - which I had hoped would be open through Belfountain as its had been months since I'd been up there. Of course, there was still a detour for whatever grave emergency road work they have going - so I consulted my map and the lines seemed to join between Old Base Line and McLaren via Creditview and Grange - and the map didn't lie, but it omitted some facts like the large section of the Grange Sideroad that isn't plowed through the winter and is still looking wintery, even though the snow everywhere else is melted. This resulted in a somewhat wild drive down a hill that I wasn't sure I could get back up if I ever found a spot wide enough to turn around on if the road got any worse or was actually closed at some point. In fact, the hill was the worst part of it and there was a little parking lot midway down - where I stopped, took this picture and then scouted the next bit of road on foot to see if I should try to go back up hill or continue. So, after a pleasant hike, I confirmed that the worst was over and the road was open all the way to McLaren - went back for the car and continued cautiously down the stretch shown above. Since, most of this detour involved wet, dirt roads - my car was a lovely shade of clay brown by the time I pulled into the Cataract parking lot. Next time... no short cuts.

Truthfully, I've definately driven on sketchier - just usually not in my car. The worst of the roads I've driven, we had a wonderful F150 with 4WD (and a chain saw for cutting trees that had fallen across the road). The road to Martin's Head was also a brutal water covered affair, but I wasn't driving and again - we had a truck. Then of course there was the road to Nasadawahank (spelling not garenteed) in Baxter State - its pretty washed out in places - but we just went slow - particularly because there were moose everywhere!!

So, in the end, the road really wasn't that bad, but my heart was certainly pounding on the way down the hill as I was mentally trying to decide how likely it was that I had cell coverage here and whether a tow truck could make it down to haul me out... Ah adventures...

I guess it was good that the drive was exciting, since the stream was only slightly higher than normal.

Oi!

Jennith