When on a road trip be prepared for surprises.
You may have the surprise of some lovely scenery you never dreamed of.
You may meet new friends along the way.
Just be very careful when taking shortcuts in new areas that you are not familiar with.
Doing so could be a life saver.
I will give a couple of scenarios that happened to me personally when on road trips over the years.
That could have been prevented if we hadn't taken a shortcut.
The first one was in Idaho.
I lived in Idaho in the nineteen seventies.
I was very young and fancy free in those days.
Not a care in the world, and I was adventurous.
My husband, at the time was a very level headed guy, and he kept us out of trouble.
We were always going fishing in the mountains of Idaho.
One weekend we decided to go to a new trout stream.
We were looking at the map closely, but some roads are not always listed on maps in the back country.
we turned on a wrong road that led us very far back into the mountains.
The fear out west is not to have enough gasoline.
This was in the summer, so bad weather was not a worry.
We kept driving and drove through a couple of logging camps, but no gas stations.
Finally we ended up in a tiny mountainous town we hadn't ever heard of, and there was a gas pump.
we filled up and got a snack and something to drink, asked directions out to a main highway, and finally made it back to civilization.
The next time I was scared out of my wits.
It was late fall in northern Minnesota.
I was following my spouse from south to north on a major highway that runs the length of Minnesota.
He was in a pick up truck and I was in our Cadillac.
He looked on the map and asked a filling station attendant about a shortcut.
They said it was okay and that it went through an Indian reservation, but it would save us a couple of hours.
We were from out of state and were not familiar with the roads.
We drove and drove for miles and miles.
The further we drove, the fewer houses we saw, until finally we were in what looked to be a wilderness area.
the roads were flat, but very curvy, and it began to snow.
We finally saw an old time general store along the barren road with some very old fashioned gas pumps.
We stopped to fill up our vehicles and we went in to pay and ask for directions.
There was a counter full of lumberjacks that all turned to stare at us.
Very creepily! We asked how far we were from our destination and they said 95 miles.
I about fainted right there.
It was snowing harder and getting dark.
We kept driving the direction they gave and our road turned into a forest service road.
We were both praying! The snow was coming down hard and visibility was terrible.
We didn't have cell phones in 1989, and we probably would not have gotten signals there anyway.
finally about three hours later we came over a bridge and the road was once again pavement.
"Woohoo and thank God" we said.
When we got to our destination, we told our friends what had happened.
They told us that the locals do not even travel that old highway in the summertime because there is only one gas station in almost two hundred miles of travel.
they said it is a remote and somewhat dangerous area.
I vowed to never drive on a shortcut again.
I never have.
This article is to save you and your loved ones a possible tragedy on what should be a fun road trip.
You may have the surprise of some lovely scenery you never dreamed of.
You may meet new friends along the way.
Just be very careful when taking shortcuts in new areas that you are not familiar with.
Doing so could be a life saver.
I will give a couple of scenarios that happened to me personally when on road trips over the years.
That could have been prevented if we hadn't taken a shortcut.
The first one was in Idaho.
I lived in Idaho in the nineteen seventies.
I was very young and fancy free in those days.
Not a care in the world, and I was adventurous.
My husband, at the time was a very level headed guy, and he kept us out of trouble.
We were always going fishing in the mountains of Idaho.
One weekend we decided to go to a new trout stream.
We were looking at the map closely, but some roads are not always listed on maps in the back country.
we turned on a wrong road that led us very far back into the mountains.
The fear out west is not to have enough gasoline.
This was in the summer, so bad weather was not a worry.
We kept driving and drove through a couple of logging camps, but no gas stations.
Finally we ended up in a tiny mountainous town we hadn't ever heard of, and there was a gas pump.
we filled up and got a snack and something to drink, asked directions out to a main highway, and finally made it back to civilization.
The next time I was scared out of my wits.
It was late fall in northern Minnesota.
I was following my spouse from south to north on a major highway that runs the length of Minnesota.
He was in a pick up truck and I was in our Cadillac.
He looked on the map and asked a filling station attendant about a shortcut.
They said it was okay and that it went through an Indian reservation, but it would save us a couple of hours.
We were from out of state and were not familiar with the roads.
We drove and drove for miles and miles.
The further we drove, the fewer houses we saw, until finally we were in what looked to be a wilderness area.
the roads were flat, but very curvy, and it began to snow.
We finally saw an old time general store along the barren road with some very old fashioned gas pumps.
We stopped to fill up our vehicles and we went in to pay and ask for directions.
There was a counter full of lumberjacks that all turned to stare at us.
Very creepily! We asked how far we were from our destination and they said 95 miles.
I about fainted right there.
It was snowing harder and getting dark.
We kept driving the direction they gave and our road turned into a forest service road.
We were both praying! The snow was coming down hard and visibility was terrible.
We didn't have cell phones in 1989, and we probably would not have gotten signals there anyway.
finally about three hours later we came over a bridge and the road was once again pavement.
"Woohoo and thank God" we said.
When we got to our destination, we told our friends what had happened.
They told us that the locals do not even travel that old highway in the summertime because there is only one gas station in almost two hundred miles of travel.
they said it is a remote and somewhat dangerous area.
I vowed to never drive on a shortcut again.
I never have.
This article is to save you and your loved ones a possible tragedy on what should be a fun road trip.