Today was a different type of trip for me I had been searching on Google Earth for locations of Granite Outcrops, and also searching for Abandoned Mines or Quarries to photograph, today was probably not the best day as it had rained most of the day, I found a track on google maps that would take me to to locations I wanted to look at and headed down Mills rd east to find the track, after turning on the track I followed the maps until I got there the track was quite rocky, sandy in some places, muddy and wet not suitable for a 2WD Vehicle, I have an AWD forester which handled it pretty good. When I arrived at my destination it poured down with rain and I never got out to go looking for the Abandoned Mines or the Granite Outcrop which wer roughly in the same area, I decided to try another route home as it was quite a rough track, after using google maps unaware at the time, it took me to the Powerlines Track which as way worse than the track I just took, the Powerlines track is rocky, muddy, ruts, creek crossings steep descents and climbs you name it a 4WDrivers dream, after folowing the track for a while I had just gotten down the the bottom of a steep descent, I was starting to think that I was never going to get out of there stoppping mulitple times to check the track up ahead and was considering turning around and going back the way I come. When I got to the bottom of the hill the rain had stopped so I got out and took a couple snaps. The photos don't do it justice on how steep the descent was sliding down a few times in the mud
Deciding that I was closer to the exit of the track and a long way off the original starting point I took on the challenge of the Powerlines track with only 3 or 4kms until Mills rd exit and probably around 12km or so from when I started, I kept going along the powerline track only locking it in sports mode 1st gear once for a steep muddy climb as I approached the top there was just lots of reasonably large rocks and ruts, eventually getting back on to Mills rd East but not without a final challenge of a few reasonably sized ruts of flowing water to cross. On the way home I was just thnking how well the Forester handled the powerlines with no damage and I didn't bottom out or get stuck once, it was a fun but challenging drive for me as I was on my own and haven't done much offroad driving like that, I did a quick Detour to Forrestdale Lake on the way home to check out how much water is in the lake and to see if it was worth going there for photos one day as I grew up in the area and used to have a lot of fun around the lake.
All Images are copyright Mark A. Gray
