From Crater Lake, we drove south to Gardnerville, Nevada, for a visit with the in-laws.
It’s roughly a 350-mile drive, largely through farm and cattle country, which should take us around six hours to complete. Leaving the lake at 9:00 a.m. in the morning, we figured we’d arrive at the in-laws around 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon.
About 2/3rd of the way down one long, lonely stretch of California highway, we came to a construction road block. We had a choice of either waiting three hours for the road to open, or backtracking over 100 miles and taking another route. I’m used to waiting (I’m married), but even Dianne doesn’t usually take that long to do something (most things). We turned around to head back.
A few miles back up the highway, we came to a side road that would take us to another highway that bypassed the closure. It required negotiating 27-miles of graded-dirt, county road – ideal Subaru wilderness country.
A local rancher driving by assured us that the road was in good condition and would take us to where we wanted to be.
We passed a pair of locals walking along the road…
…and saw seas of yellow flowers painting the ground.
It took nearly an hour to cover all 27 miles, but we eventually reached pavement and were on our way into Nevada…
We arrived at the in-law’s house around 6:30 for a delightful (but short) visit.
That was Thursday. On Friday, I took the Subie into the local dealer to have the blinker fluid changed. Some dealers wash the car when you bring it in for service, but not this one.
Subie still proudly wears some of the dirt from her 27-mile detour.