Your nearest point of relief is the nearest point from where the ball rests to where the cart path is no longer interferes with your stance.

If you are on the right side of the fairway and the cart path is on the right and you are right of the cart path, the nearest relief of the cart path is to the right. Nearest point of relief can be in the trees - the ruling is the nearest point of relief from the path, regardless of what other obstructions may be around.

You can use Danny's suggestion, but you would have to take an unplayable lie to drop on the cartpath (you can't take a drop on the cart path after claiming you need relief from the cart path because it is not dropping at a point of relief. Also, it wouldn't be the NEAREST point of relief.) At that point, drop the ball, up to three times if it doesn't bounce too far away. It could land on the cart path and back into the original position and you'd be no better off, yet hitting 3 instead of 2.

__________________
Gord

Quote of the month:
"It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification." ~Bruce McCall