Thank you for the thoughtful write-up on this. I felt very similarly about this situation. When they were first reported missing, I think I remember thinking, "They've got off the main road and got lost/stuck, and it's going to end badly."
My home town is Challenge, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. My father was a US Forest Service officer, and I lived with him on a series of USFS bases. I know a bit about back-country roads. But I also know that years of city living have made me a bit soft, and I don't think I'd try taking a debatable road like that. It's easy to say in retrospect, though.
Some years ago, Lisa and I were driving up I-5 through Oregon in that same general area. (She doesn't go that way very often, as she prefers the US-97/OR-58 route, which, while not a freeway, is still a main highway.) During the day, we got the idea of trying to follow a minor road indicated on our AAA map that appears to follow more closely the railroad. (The railroad in this area is the original Southern Pacific route to Oregon; SP built a better route via Klamath Falls later, and this "Siskyou Route" is now operated by a short-line railroad, Central Oregon & Pacific.) We got off the freeway where the map seemed to indicate, and hunted around for the road on the map. We found several places, none of which resembled the road we wanted. When pavement ran out and we found ourselves with a choice of dirt roads, neither of which appeared to be going the direction we wanted to go, we turned around and drove back to I-5, grumbling about AAA. I wrote to AAA complaining about that phantom road on their map. When the next edition of the Oregon highway map appeared, I looked at it, and found that the phantom road had vanished. So I guess I'd done a good deed by reporting an inaccuracy and getting it corrected.
Oh, I do carry a several-days emergency survival pack in my van, too -- it doubles as the earthquake-preparedness kit. And besides my cell phone (which probably won't work too far beyond the narrow I-5 band), I have my amateur radio and CB radio. So while I hope to never be in such a dire situation as the Kims, I also have made preparations to try and survive and recover from it should it ever happen.
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Date: 2006-12-09 06:04 pm (UTC)My home town is Challenge, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. My father was a US Forest Service officer, and I lived with him on a series of USFS bases. I know a bit about back-country roads. But I also know that years of city living have made me a bit soft, and I don't think I'd try taking a debatable road like that. It's easy to say in retrospect, though.
Some years ago, Lisa and I were driving up I-5 through Oregon in that same general area. (She doesn't go that way very often, as she prefers the US-97/OR-58 route, which, while not a freeway, is still a main highway.) During the day, we got the idea of trying to follow a minor road indicated on our AAA map that appears to follow more closely the railroad. (The railroad in this area is the original Southern Pacific route to Oregon; SP built a better route via Klamath Falls later, and this "Siskyou Route" is now operated by a short-line railroad, Central Oregon & Pacific.) We got off the freeway where the map seemed to indicate, and hunted around for the road on the map. We found several places, none of which resembled the road we wanted. When pavement ran out and we found ourselves with a choice of dirt roads, neither of which appeared to be going the direction we wanted to go, we turned around and drove back to I-5, grumbling about AAA. I wrote to AAA complaining about that phantom road on their map. When the next edition of the Oregon highway map appeared, I looked at it, and found that the phantom road had vanished. So I guess I'd done a good deed by reporting an inaccuracy and getting it corrected.
Oh, I do carry a several-days emergency survival pack in my van, too -- it doubles as the earthquake-preparedness kit. And besides my cell phone (which probably won't work too far beyond the narrow I-5 band), I have my amateur radio and CB radio. So while I hope to never be in such a dire situation as the Kims, I also have made preparations to try and survive and recover from it should it ever happen.