We followed Zdon's directions, but road closure took us to the wrong canyon. TomG figured out we were in Thorndyke Canyon, instead of Lacey Canyon when our route didn't match what was on his map. Thorndyke Canyon was off his map. We climbed up a steep ridge, and tried circumnavigating to avoid dropping back down. We came across other big drops which we couldn't see on the GPS, and took us farther to the east than we expected. This made our 9 mi/2800'gain easy trip into a 15.5 mi/4172'gain day. We got to see an old mine, a reservoir with dead snakes and mummified jackrabbits, an old cabin, a live snake, wild horses, and beautiful desert tracked with only hoofprints. Stuff we would have missed if we went a different way. We kept in mind, "a bad day in the mountains is better than a good day at work". We almost passed on making the summit due to time, but when we got closer "summit fever" hit and we summitted just before dark. We headed down the steep west side and turned on the headlamps as we approached the base of the mountain. After walking a flat area for an hour or so, we dropped into Lacey Canyon, and hoped we didn't have to deal with dry falls. We only ran into 2, but were able to climb down. We sent at least 3 SPOT checks to show where we were that didn't go thru due to cloud cover. On the summit 8 hrs after we started, we sent one that went thru (clear skies), which had our SPOT checkers a little concerned and calling each other about the situation. 5.5 hrs later we were back at Thorndyke Canyon. It was a beautiful day and night for hiking, and even though it was long. And hiking with TomG is always good company! Everything was closed, so we ate what we had for dinner, then found a place to camp. (wk 146, day 1 of 3)