Lying Son of a Map

There is a fallacy in the recreational world that a forest service map will always bear some slight resemblance to the area in which you are located. Sooner or later the unsuspecting recreator discovers this truth: Maybe the roads drawn on the map are there. Maybe they aren’t. Friday we ran into the “maybe they aren’t” map.

Wilbur, Jose', and I four-wheeled back into them thar hills. Jose and Wilbur were in search of elk. I was in search of fun. Getting home for dinner in a timely manner was a top priority because Sophia was cooking steak. Around 4:00 we decided we would take roads, shown clearly on the map, which emptied into the main road instead of back tracking. This route was quicker than back tracking. So we went in search of the connecting back roads. Road number one led to a water trough and became a dead end. Another led to a deep draw and became a dead end. The third led to another deep draw and, you guessed it, another dead end. One of the roads actually did lead to some elk and Jose' and Wilbur got out their bows for a few minutes. And then the road vanished into yet another dead end. So we followed the only road left. Surely this must lead us to the main road!

The last road did indeed lead us to a main road. Unfortunately the road was four miles south of Whitehall about 30 miles away from where we were camped.

Truth number two: four-wheelers are a horrible ride on pavement. We had to ride ten miles on pavement before we came to the main dirt road that would lead us to steak, I mean to camp. All the way back, we searched the main road for the legendary roads that connected to it from the hills. Legendary is the correct adjective. There was not one main-road to back-road connection.

Shortly after 7:00 p.m. we pulled into our camp. Luckily, Sophia is used to Jose’s meanderings and did not boycott cooking for a bunch of lost souls that can’t get to dinner at a reasonable time. The moral of this story is: Watch out for people and documents of questionable veracity. You might run into a lying son of a map.