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Something that's always kept me from attempting to locate the Cleft is the fact that I can't even locate the position of the D'ni Restoration Council... and you're given the exact address! According to their website, the address should be "14617 Old Caverns HWY. Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220". Should be easy enough to find, right? Not even close... (Note: Jump down to the summary at the end if you don't want to read a long ramble about missing roads, oddities about Old Caverns Hwy, and other items that make this street seem like a Myst puzzle.)
For starters, this road's addresses are completely mixed up in general. Starting up at the north end of this road, Google Maps says that street addresses start somewhere around 3300. These continue on in the normal fashion, incrementing extremely quickly, until we reach the end of the 'urban' section of this road. The street addresses appear to abruptly end somewhere around 7510 and start over at 0. The last major item Google Maps places on this road is also here at 7505 Old Cavern Hwy: The Burning X Ranch. Continuing on from 0, the addresses slowly but steadily rise to somewhere beyond 2244. For some reason, Google Maps stops giving address numbers at some point... Needless to say, we haven't even come close to 14617 Old Caverns Hwy. Assumedly the numbers do continue, so we need to see where this road does end up going.
If we continue to follow the unnumbered Old Cavern Hwy., we soon reach a point where the Hwy appears to continue to the south (and on into Texas), but it actually makes an abrupt 90-degree turn to the west, and then ceases to be labeled at all on Google Maps! (N32*03'05 W104*14'54) This had completely thrown me off the trail in the past as the obvious route would be to continue south, and the westward road is only periodically labeled Old Cavern Hwy in Google Maps.
If you follow the westerly road, the Hwy splits in two and merges with another road going north-south. (N32*01'26 W104*16'53) The south route eventually reaches the border of New Mexico and Texas and ends. The northern path eventually turns to the east and collides with a previous portion of Old Cavern Hwy somewhere around the 2244 section. This is most likely not the route of Old Cavern Hwy...
Returning to the north-south split-up, there is a third unlabeled road that continues to the west (and which I missed at first). (N32*02'24 W104*17'17) Despite disappearing momentarily in a creek and confusing itself with several other unlabeled roads, you will find that this road eventually splits (N32*01'50 W104*19'13), and then splits again (N32*01'56 W104*20'56). One split ends at Dillahunty Road (N32*03'19 W104*20'26), one merges with another unlabeled north-south road (N32*02'22 W104*21'56), and the last split continues on to the west before finding itself in a three-way dead end (N32*01'56 W104*23'37). The last one might continue on but it's hard to tell as it's very faint... Of course, there's a plethora of unmarked/faint trails left in the dirt branching off of all of these roads in a multitude of places, and the DRC/cleft could be off any of these...
Just for the heck of it, I decided to back up my findings about the numbering system by exploring the old out-of-date map provided by my GPS just to make sure I had a secondary source. To my surprise, there were quite a few major differences. The northern tip of Old Cavern Hwy starts with the 100 to 200 block and then jumps straight into the 3330 block. Also, instead of resetting at 7510, the address is 4875 on the GPS and continues on counting with no breaks in the series until it reaches 7599 at the point where it makes the 90 degree turn to the west. At this point on the map, all of the roads beyond here are unnamed, so it is impossible to tell which way to go. If we follow the presumed route of Old Cavern Hwy, most of the roads found on Google Maps are missing, and the existing roads all dead end at the border of Texas and New Mexico... The real problem is the disparity in the street numbers, and I have no idea which map (Google or GPS) to trust...
One more thought about addresses with respect to the Google map: Assuming that the road really does start at 3300 instead of looping the numbers back around (0 to 2244 and beyond being the missing 3300 addresses and thus not able to be the location of the DRC), we can potentially subtract that midpoint address from the DRC address to figure out where we need to go. In other words, DRC address - weird restart in numbering = real address past the restart point or (14617 - 7510) Old cavern Hwy = 7107 Old Cavern Hwy. Not sure whether this would be back in the first batch of addresses (3300 to 7510) or after 7510, but most likely the later. Of course, we might have to just figure out where 14617 is...
Summary: No matter which map or number you use, the DRC is located deep in the desert near the Texas border. This leads me to wonder if the DRC headquarters is located at the same position as the cleft. Perhaps the website/address is meant to be a puzzle that we can solve to prove that we're smart enough to be able to go to D'ni?
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