[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by riverkid

Context context context and finally, context.

I agree that we'll never know unless we can track down the speaker. If this is an isolated sentence from some grammar book/test, then we're SOL.

Don't you think that as a written example, it is less than felicitous, Mike? It sounds more like speech to me. The placement of the adverbial phrase, "about a mile out of town" sounds odd. Was the start of the dirt road or the valley 'about a mile out of town'.

I think that this could easily be viewed as speech, where the speaker has forgotten part of the description and adds it as an afterthought

We went along a dirt road that led down into a valley -- [that was] about a mile out of town, where there was a pond [which was where we went down into the valley].

All of that is possible. Yet, we have to deal with the sentence we have.