Last Saturday some friends and I went four wheeling up in the mountains when we came upon this scene at about 6000 feet elevation in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This begs the question: How do brand new 2008 Pontiac Grand Prix sedans come to rest on the tops of mountains miles away from the nearest paved road? Perhaps a great flood deposited here a la the ark and Mount Ararat. Maybe it was a giant tornado, is that a foot sticking out from under the car?
In reality this is a perfect example of why when querying your GPS navigation system for directions you may want to ask for the "best route" as opposed to the "shortest route". One of the guys I was riding with happens to work for the tow truck company that is supposed to recover this vehicle as soon as the weather permits and told us the story behind it.
Back in mid December a couple of guys who work for Chevron were visiting from out of the country and rented this car at Meadows Field in Bakersfield. On the weekend they decided to make a trip to our local ski area, Alta Sierra, and asked the cars navigation system for the shortest route to get there. Rather then send then on the well maintained, paved roads which are available to travel to Alta Sierra, the GPS calculated a shorter route which involved traveling through a warren of dirt trails which I'm surprised it even knew about since I wouldn't really classify them as roads. Anyway these guys set off, following the instructions of the GPS, trusting that is somehow had more sense than they did. Most of us would have turned around when the pavement ended and the road became a rutted, rock-strewn trail. We certainly would have headed back when the dirt turned to mud and then snow, but not these guys. Maybe where they came from all the the roads are crappy and they didn't really see a problem. Anyway they eventually reached a point where they could no longer move forward or backward and ended up having to abandon the car and walk 12 miles back to a paved road for help. That night it snowed allot and it has snowed allot since making it impossible to retrieve the car for these past few months. Needless to say this has turned out to be a very expensive car rental and a reminder that technology doesn't always trump common sense.
3 comments:
We're honored to be your first commenters (I speak on behalf of mom who is sitting here on her sickbed). That's a hilarious story and mom said she and dad had a similar experience on their drive back from Texas to California when they ended up on some rutted dirt road on an indian reservation in Arizona. I wouldn't know anything about that. Our hoopty Durango doesn't have working automatic windows, let alone GPS.
Now that you have a blog, you know I'm itching to make it all cute and scrapbooky. You know you want it!
Reminds me of the recent trip to San Antonio when Chip and Vicki drove me to Roswell, NM to meet your dad. I questioned him repeatedly as to how he was going from Roswell to San Antonio without going through Lubbock, but took his word for it that we needed to make the two hour drive to Roswell. Well, the next morning as we took off for San Antonio following the GPS, I began to recognize landmarks. Sure enough, we retraced the exact route Chip took driving me to Roswell the night before and a couple hours later were skirting around Lubbock about 2 miles from our house. Just goes to show you....
How is it that I didn't get the blog announcement? Oh well I pleased to see you guys decided to start one. I will be checking frequently for new pictures. This story is great I love the picture!!
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