These fools made their own bad luck. I wish SFGate had a comments section.
They couldn't even follow Google's directions, the pin on the map shows them well off of the intended route. Had they glanced at their phone before they turned off the highway they would have seen they were going down the wrong "road". They were supposed to take Sandy Valley Rd, 20 miles of 20 ft wide, graded and maintained road with a sign that says "Sandy Valley." I call it a "45 MPH road." If you go 45 MPH or faster all of the bumps disappear. From Sandy Valley it's another 20 miles on narrow two lane paved roads to I-15 at Jean.
Instead, they took off down an unmarked, unmapped dirt track. Had they glanced at the phone before they left the highway they would have seen they were in the wrong place. What's really hilarious are the lemmings who blindly followed behind them.
Or they could have looked at the suggested detour and said, "Hmmm. This will add an hour and a half on slow roads to our trip. Maybe we should just chill here until the freeway re-opens." Or take US 95 to I-40, it's only 30 minutes longer than taking I-15.
At least they had fairly pleasant weather, not the 110 degree summer heat.