My car hits a pothole and recent rainwater splashes high. I’m driving over the unpaved Devil’s Track Road unfinished construction zone.
I step on the gas again and bump and bounce over the gravel washboard, small rocks flying.
Driving this stretch of road should be fun since conditions are perfect for an off-road vehicle like my Jeep Wrangler, but I just want to drive to town, not take a jaunt through the woods. I’m lucky to be in an off-road vehicle and feel sorry for regular vehicles traversing this same road. The lurches and leaps over rough terrain must wreak regular havoc on them.
I bet most residents of the Devil Track Lake area would like to find someone to thank. But who?
Who does a person thank for the mess on County Road 8. The county engineer? The Minnesota Department of Transportation? According to an August 27 News-Herald article, we will have the good fortune to spend a whole winter doing it.
Apparently, this whole muddle began when the construction company, KGM, began working on County Road 8 during the state government shut-down last summer. When the shut-down ended, KGM was pulled back to finish its original job on Highway 61 near Split Rock, leaving Cook County residents jolting and grating over our local road, chipping paint and windshields and—never mind undercarriages.
The construction company was available to finish the road in October, but someone decided that the weather is “likely to be too cold by then.” Also, according to a quote from the same article, the “silver lining” is that the Devil’s Track Road will have time to settle before paving, and this will result in a “better road in the long run.”
Really?
Why, then, not let roads all over the state of Minnesota remain unpaved over the winter so we will all have perfect roads?
Scheduled to be done or not done, the crux of this matter is that one of the better road surfaces in Cook County was torn up and now remains in a deplorable condition, and the ridiculous part is that we are actually paying for this. We are paying to wreck our own cars. Why did we tear up a good road to spend all that money?
I plan to have a fantastic driving experience this winter as the road freezes and thaws and snowplows do their job scraping away gravel and roadbed. Same should be true for anyone who loves a challenge or is a masochist.
I have another concern. A large number of trees and beautiful wetlands have been eradicated, uprooted and despoiled to widen this road. Where are the protesters, the many people who protest ATVs and the whiff of any mechanized machinery in the BWCAW? I would think someone would be picketing and protesting this desecration of nature. But nobody is.
Whoever or whatever made the decision to not pave in October should pray for ice, snow and freezing temps. Those of us who must suffer the indignities of having to drive this road daily are not happy anyway, and warm and beautiful weather will not make us any happier.
Perhaps, in the spirit of better public relations, the county could give vouchers to every taxpayer on the Devil’s Track Road for weekly car washes. At the very least, we’d know who to thank for something.
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