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Adventures with Javier

5 comments
  • North America
  • United States
Jan 10 2015
Post's featued image.

A lot of the time on this trip Emma is the chief Navigator. But sometimes Emma takes a nap and lets Javier, our Spanish-speaking, slightly scatterbrained GPS take charge of the navigational guidance.

When we are in a big city with lots of freeways and on-ramps and off-ramps and seriously confusing spaghetti junctions, this can be a good thing. 

That way if things go wrong, Javier gets the blame.

Sometimes Javier can find a way through where the maps are vague regarding the location of the back roads. 

Sometimes we find ourselves in abandoned towns and farms that no longer make the map.

So is this road on the map?
Middle of nowhere
Not quite sure where this place is, but I’m guessing it isn’t visited a lot…

Sometimes however, we end up somewhere that maybe none of us intended, not even Javier.

One such occasion was when, in Nevada, we decided we wanted to explore the abandoned mill and ghost towns in a section of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

We had decided it would be fun to head south again, but the map showed no through roads in the National Forest. Never mind, we’ll just ask Javier. Ask him we did, he came up with a plan, proving himself to be a much more worthwhile navigator than Emma who was merely using a badly drawn map she had located online to find the abandoned Belmont Mill. 

We temporarily ignored Javier’s plaintive yammering to take a side trip to the aforementioned mill. He wasn’t impressed, shouting things like ‘Cuando pueda haga un cambio de sentido’ (Which by the way, is what Javier says when he is really mad.)

Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill
Belmont Mill

As a bonus as we arrived at the mill he came up with a ‘Plan B’ and picked a different, more elaborate sounding plan to take us through the backwoods of Nevada—excellent!

As we started journey the road seemed reasonable.

Reasonable road

Then it seemed slightly more sketchy…

Slightly more sketchy

Then slightly more sketchy…

Slightly more sketchy

Slightly more sketchy

Ben gets a little sideways in our house

Ben gets a little sideways in our house

Then genuinely concerning…

Slightly more sketchy

From here it only gets narrower…

Finally, only a couple of kilometres from what looked to be a far more sensible road we had to admit defeat.

Probably can't drive our house through here

Probably can’t drive our house through here… maybe we should have travelled by motorbike?

Sorry Javier, try again!

4WDabandonedadventureback roadsbuildingemptyGPSJavierlostmillminenational forestNevadaoldrustyUSA
« Nevada, not just aliens and neon lights
Utah. Possibly another planet. Part 1. »
  1. TJ 

    The Worsley springs to mind

    January 10, 2015 at 7:59 pm Reply
    • Emma 

      We’ve said that on a couple of occasions as we’ve driven down other roads Javier has suggested. Seems he has an affinity for adventure…

      January 14, 2015 at 3:55 pm Reply
  2. Rhonda 

    We named ours Pedro.. hoping he’s slightly more accurate than Javier 🙂

    January 13, 2015 at 9:37 am Reply
    • Emma 

      Fingers crossed—depends on the information you feed them I think. We should’ve sprung for better maps I think.

      January 14, 2015 at 3:54 pm Reply
  3. Pingback: The Copper Canyon with questionable maps. Part one. |

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