It happened the morning we were running precheck, so we didn’t find out about it until we reached the gorge’s beginning and found a dump truck across both lanes. “How long will it be closed,” we asked the Caltrans worker. “I dunno,” he said with a shrug, “Could be three days, could be three months.” Not an answer one likes to hear.

I was ready to pull the plug, but I knew that some folks had bought plane tickets, and I checked with them and found that some were not refundable. So, we waited.