U.S. Route 50 in Nevada, the loneliest road in America
In 1989, aged 18, my British boyfriend and I set out on a road trip in a battered Nissan 200SX around the United States, dreaming of the big skies we would see on our journey from the East to West Coast and back again.
We'd been driving for a few weeks by the time we hit Nevada, sleeping in our car at truck stops next to idling behemoths, awed by the incredible scenery and the adventures we'd had. My boyfriend, obsessed with construction machinery, had read in a magazine about the biggest truck in the world located on a mine just off US Route 50 in the middle of Nevada and he was practically salivating at the idea of seeing it in person. The map confirmed that Route 50 would indeed take us close to where he 'thought the mine was' and after that we could cut into California as planned. I wasn't crazy about the detour but he'd already sold his precious motocross bike to come on the trip with me so I acquiesced. With that decision two teenagers unwittingly set off along the dilapidated stretch of asphalt dubbed by Life magazine 'The Loneliest Road in America'.
We drove for miles and hours. No other cars passed us. The stark, flat desert stretched on in every direction, the pot-holed road an endless thin, shimmering line in the baking summer heat. The air was charged and at one point lightning hit the dirt not far from the car, scaring us nearly to death. Time and distance meant nothing. We'd been idling away the hours reading Stephen King short stories to each other (bizarrely, King wrote a horror novel about this road a few years later) but we had no appetite for horror now. The radio was only static, no preachers or country music this far into the uninhabited wasteland. Conversation dwindled as our unease deepened. The desert was beautiful but terrifying in its perfect, unchanging isolation.
As the hours slipped past and the gas needle got steadily lower, the day fading into glorious dark blue and purple, we realised we'd reached the point of no return. We were going to have to sleep on this empty road, accompanied by the enormous night sky and the sound of coyotes. We snacked on whatever was in the car (no welcoming Denny's sign on this stretch of hell) and spent a restless night before continuing the lonely journey at dawn, tendrils of fear tickling my neck knowing we could break down here and our chances of short-term rescue were slim.
The next morning we finally arrived at the mine! My boyfriend leapt out of the car, ready to charm the miners into letting him see the truck, when we realised the gates were shut. It was a Saturday. Being on extended holiday we'd lost track of what day it was. There was a perplexed and understandably incredulous watchman who told us it would reopen on Monday. My boyfriend glanced at me hopefully but one look told him that spending two more days on this accursed road just so he could see the biggest Tonka toy in the world was not going to happen. It was like telling a six-year-old Santa Claus did not exist. Hours later, with overwhelming relief, we pulled into a diner, the creeping terror of that trip dissipating like smoke in the wind.
Those kinds of experiences are hard to find in our digital world, but the bleak beauty of Route 50 still whispers to me and will one day welcome me back for another lonely adventure.
Helen Manzano lives in London and works in IT but plans to be a full-time road-tripper in the near future.
