Off-roading in a Minivan

So a few weeks ago, my sister Anna and my nephews, Ben and Aaron, were visiting us while Anna's husband Matt was in Mexico with their youth group. Matt dropped Anna and the boys off near our place on their way down south, and picked them up again on their way back up to Oregon. Well, we actually had to drive Anna and the boys to meet up with the group in Ione, a city about 45 minutes from Sacramento. At least, it was supposed to be only a 45-minute drive...

See, it all started when I printed out directions on how to get to Ione using some computer software I have. Having never been to Ione, I assumed it was giving me good directions. We were in a rented minivan with NO navigation system (something I never want to be without again), and the trip turned into a real comedy of errors.

So here we were: my brother Nate, my sister Anna, the two little boys and me, off to take a leisurely little drive to Ione. Ione is out in the country, by the way -- kind of the middle of nowhere. Keep that in mind as you read.

Our first mistake was missing a road we were supposed to turn on. We just kept going and going and going...and weren't seeing the road. Finally the road we were on spit us out onto the freeway, so we realized we must have missed it and backtracked until we saw it. We turned onto this road and soon discovered that what started as a road quickly turned into little more than a trail. The road got narrower and narrower and was soon just dirt instead of cement. All we saw for miles around was farmland and fences...no houses, no cars...nothing. We would round a bend or crest a hill and see nothing for miles but more of the same...and we had no cell phone reception!


Here's what we saw:








We debated about whether we should keep going, hoping we'd find a main road again, or whether we should just go back the way we came. We decided to press on. We finally did come to a main road, only to come to a place a little bit later where we weren't sure which way to go -- and chose what we later discovered was the wrong way: we ended up on yet ANOTHER out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere road with barely any signs of civilization around us. And this road was in WORSE condition than the first road -- we were bouncing over potholes and swerving to avoid big piles of gravel, backing up to avoid driving into ditches, carefully lining our wheels up with the ruts of previous travelers who'd managed to navigate the craziness...it was so bad it was funny! We were not just in the middle of nowhere -- we were in the MIDDLE of the middle of nowhere!

Anna started singing, "Five passengers set sail that day for a three-hour tour..." and we all laughed. "We should have brought Skipper and Gilligan!" I responded. (Those are my cats, for those of you who don't know!) Every time we got to the top of a hill and saw nothing more than miles of this same road stretching before us, we had to laugh -- it was just too crazy! Meanwhile, we knew that Matt was waiting for us and probably wondering what on earth had happened! We couldn't call him, because we had no cell reception.






FINALLY, we saw some farmhouses in the distance. We stopped at one to ask the way to Ione, because we didn't want to do any more minivan off-roading, thank you very much! When the farmer discovered which way we'd come, he was incredulous. "That seven-mile stretch of bad road? I've lived here for eight years and have only been on that road four times, and only when absolutely necessary!" He graciously gave us directions and we arrived in Ione about 2 1/2 hours after we'd left Sacramento -- I told Matt I'd just been trying to sneak in a little extra time with my sis! ;-)


I learned several things through this experience:


1) Either make sure you have a GPS system in your vehicle when headed to a new location, or get good directions from a local!


2) If you are stuck in a minivan, lost in the California countryside, make sure you have traveling companions by your side who can take it all in stride and laugh at it with you. It helps not having uptight, stressed-out passengers! Even though Anna was anxious to get to her husband after not seeing him for 10 days, she didn't get a bad attitude or blame me for getting lost, which I really appreciate! :-)


Hope you enjoyed the chronicle of our little adventure!