"Driving, exploring, and going"

Slinging through switchbacks, you can hear the trill of a birdcall or the pale alarm of cicadas. Little treasures that remind you to take in more than the road ahead. National forest roads spiderweb the southeast, two-track dirt lanes that spiral over ridges, trace trout streams to their sources, and run you far from cell service. After lunch, we aimed at a rough route with a handful of shallow water crossings. The road dissolved, from abandoned asphalt to bare clay and limestone, but the Nomad scrambled over all of it.