Reality can come up and whomp you on the back of the head sometimes when you think things are going just as rosy as can be. Fortunately, I've had some pretty smooth going in my life for the most part, but still there are those times when the roads get rough...
Roads are my favorite way to travel. Best of all is when I'm driving. That suits my wife most of the time as she would rather just sit back and enjoy the ride when on routes she doesn't know. She doesn't like driving in heavy traffic although she often has to do that around Los Angeles where we live. And when it comes to driving on mountain roads then just forget it. She's terrified.
A few years ago when we were returning from one of our trips back east, we had spent a night in Colorado Springs and got up the next day to drive to Montrose CO via a visit to Pike's Peak. I noticed that after the Peak we could follow small roads through the old mining town of Cripple Creek and then a very small road to Hwy 50 which would take us to Montrose.
After a brief visit to a casino in Cripple Creek where we had a mediocre lunch, we continued southward. I noticed that there were no longer highway numbers, but a sign pointed to the next town I was hoping to find. The road was now gravel with few other cars on it. Soon I came to a divide with no markings other than one sign that pointed to a lake. The map showed a lake, but no road beyond it. My GPS seemed to be in a quandary. Fortunately a truck was coming out of the road to the lake and I called out to the driver. He confirmed that the road he was coming from was to a lake with no outlet beyond that. He informed us that the other road would take us to HWY 50 about 30 or 40 miles. I was relieved as I continued down the appropriate gravel road.
My relief was soon turned to apprehension once again as the gravel road became more rutted and muddy and then began to skirt steep precipices. The road narrowed to one lane much of the time so that I feared encountering another vehicle in the opposite direction. Fortunately, the few encounters were at wider places in the road or areas where there were pullovers for camping or whatever. My wife was in terror as we proceeded--no, she was probably more angry that I had dragged her on this road.
Eventually we did reach HWY 50 and continued on to our day's destination without further bad highways. I had to say that the gravel road was scary for a while, but it was one of the most beautiful drives we had seen on our travels. My wife conceded to that beauty, but I doubt that she'd ever want to go back on that route. It was a really rough road.
What was the scariest drive you've ever taken? Do you mind driving on perilous roads? Would you tend to avoid an out of the way route in favor of taking the more advised highway?
That sounds like a rough ride indeed. Once, with a group of friends, we helped someone move from Chicago to Phoenix. We thought it would be a fun road trip and a great chance to spend time together. It turns out moving to him meant 3 giant moving trucks and a car with a boat attached. We needed to do some mountain driving and it was the most terrifying experience of my life. I like to say it took me three months to stop shaking afterwards, and that's only a slight exaggeration.
ReplyDeleteDeborah, sounds like a crazy moving expedition that should have been done by professionals. Three trucks is way too much!
DeleteLee
Scariest drive I've ever taken was down Interstate 24, in a U-Haul truck, down the mountains. Had I known it would have been that scary, I would have taken 65 from Nashville...
ReplyDeleteI tend to avoid roads like that for that very reason. Driving is not my thing so I just want to get to my destination as quickly as possible.
ReplyDeleteHelping my brother drive with a U-Haul through St. Louis rush hour traffic. That was terrifying.
My scariest experience was in the Golan Heights during an unusual snowstorm. Our bus driver refused to turn on the defoggers for the longest time, so he couldn't see out of the windows, and he was also going the wrong way on a narrow one-way road. He and our tour guide got into a heated argument in Hebrew, both about the defoggers and his refusal to back up before going even farther in the wrong direction. To make it even better, there were signs warning of undetonated landmines behind barbed wire on both sides, left over from the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, and we were very close to the Syrian border on that snowy, slippery mountain. Finally, our driver turned on the defoggers and backed up down the entire one-way road before turning onto the right path. Some of the other people on the bus said they felt like twenty years had been taken off their lives, and one person said he was glad we didn't slip into Syria.
ReplyDeleteCarrie-Anne, yeah, that sounds pretty scary. I'm getting too old for such excitement, but I'm not sure that I'd been too up on it when I was younger either.
DeleteLee
thecontemplativecat here. One of the scariest mountain rides was hairpin curves that looked down at the canyon below. another was in Ireland where the passenger side brush scraped against the windows and sometimes on both passenger and drivers side.
ReplyDeleteI remember Cripple Creek before the casinos, it was the neatest little town. But the scariest drive? Easy - we were full-time RVers with a medium duty Freightliner pulling a 42' toy hauler with toy motorcycles in the back garage. We had just left a log home seminar weekend in NC and were headed to visit friends in TN.
ReplyDeleteThe GPS had us turn off the highway and onto a side road. We hadn't gone but a few minutes before we realized we shouldn't be on the hairpin curved mountain road but there was no place to turn around. It was made worse by encountering traffic cones in the middle of the road. We took out a lot of them as we continued on.
The road construction crew passed us going the other way as they picked up the cones and shouted at us that we shouldn't be on that road. We shouted back that we knew but there was no place to turn around.
We eventually made it back to a main road and to our friends. When I had time to look at a map I realized if we had continued one more exit before getting off!
Donna: Click for my 2025 A-Z Blog
Donna, where were you? I know east Tennessee and North Carolina pretty well. I think GPS has gotten more accurate but I have been led into some odd places by my GPS.
DeleteLee
I can't top that Golan Heights story. Best I can manage was going a back road "scenic route" through Brown County Indiana. Lots of Woods, lots of hills, all with sharp turns at the top and at least one steep side. Oh, and a gas tank approaching E and plenty of Jed Clampett's near relation living in the valleys.
ReplyDeleteCW, I've driven those parts in Indiana and they are indeed some beautiful drives. Gas tank approaching E adventures I've had a few and would rather avoid in the future.
DeleteLee