Having just landed in Salt Lake City earlier that morning, my husband and I had covered a lot of ground in the past six hours, making multiple stops in the city before heading west to the Bonneville Salt Flats (click here). Located close to the Nevada border, we found Route 93 South to be the best way to our next destination, Zion National Park.
It was 5 pm; the plan was to keep driving until Mister Rain was beginning to tire. We were not prepared for what was ahead, or should I say what wasn’t ahead.
For 130 miles, we drove a two-lane road with no homes or other buildings in sight. Very rarely would there be a car in front of or behind us, equally as infrequent was the number of vehicles passing us, traveling in the opposite direction.
Mountains, some snow-capped, rose high in the surrounding distance. I am always entranced by a white peak.
Every so often we would pass a dirt side road, but they all appeared to lead to nowhere.
The vast void outside our windows brought a peaceful quiet into the car, peppered only by Mister Rain’s descriptions of what he was observing. This zen-like state was abruptly broken, replaced with fright, when my husband slammed on the brakes.
“What was that?,” I asked breathlessly. Though I can’t see very well, I was able to tell that there was no one near us.
“I saw something run across the road. I thought it was an animal but it was a tumbleweed!”
You never forget your first; neither of us had ever seen a tumbleweed in real life before. Well technically I still haven’t seen one but we’re going to say it counts.
Finally we entered the first and only town we had come across: Ely, Nevada. Mister Rain said he was fine to keep driving, but I strongly suggested we find a place to stay for the evening. We had gotten up at 4 am Philadelphia-time, we had accomplished more than enough for one day.
The next morning before getting back on Route 93, we stopped at a coffee shop. While I got us a table, my husband waited for our order, striking up a conversation with a man standing behind him. Mister Rain told him about our drive the day before after which the gentleman informed Mister Rain that we had traveled through the “frontier” where you will only see a house every 60 miles. My husband kindly countered that he had seen none, causing the man to laugh.
The gentleman went on to say had we not stopped in Ely last night, it would have been two hundred more miles of the same, as well as a climb in elevation to 8,000 feet, all while in the dark, the prime time when animals are out and about, including in the middle of the road. Back on Route 93, the next several hours proved the gentleman right.
Quite unexpectedly, we encountered a sign providing information on how to REPORT SHOOTING FROM HIGHWAY. Alrighty, then.
For the next seven days Mister Rain and I would take in Utah’s extraordinary natural beauty. We would spend a night in a unique resort, we would swim in a unique setting. But in its nothingness, Route 93 proved to be a really something, a remarkably captivating adventure of its own.
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