Mate...if they were higher they may have made it to better ground than the lake!
Those of us who weren't there, will never know what quick choices they were presented with; only the pilot will be able to tell us. As for being higher; within 5nm you are presented with heavily treed vegetation, a flat salt lake or a satisfactorily wide highway - albeit with up to 800 cars and trucks a day on it. I'd guess their choice was pretty limited, and the middle choice looked good. No telling how good or bad the surface is, sometimes you can strike sections of salt lake surfaces that will support vehicles/planes. The highway is risky, despite looking good.
A business partner had a fuel tank transfer switch failure in his Cherokee in the early 1980's, and landed on the highway between Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. All went well with the dead stick landing, until he struck a roadside signpost. The signpost nearly took the wing off the Cherokee, and made a very messy finish to what he thought was going to be a copybook dead stick landing.