Question from a New Yawker :)
Is there really any road or highway left in the US where you would be in serious trouble if your car and cell phone died?
I mean any place where you might not see another car for a few days go by?
Thanks in advance.
There are lots of them. Several in Nevada for sure. We went for half hour or more with no cars and no cell for more than an hour+. There were quite a few places that if there was an issue, you would be in serious trouble.
A road near me comes to mind, The Death Valley Road between Big Pine California and Death Valley. Starts out paved turns to gravel, then into a rough dirt road. Very remote. Days could pass before you see another vehicle. I once talked a British couple with an infant from going that way. The route looks shorter on a map that the other roads. There are many places around my parts where cell phones are useless.
Check out the Trans-Labrador Highway in Canada. It sounds like quite a daunting road to drive. Much of it is not even paved, and the area is so remote that you're supposed to stop at the gas station at one end of the highway, pick up a two-way radio to take with you in case you run into trouble, and then drop the radio off at the gas station at the other end.
Yes there’s a number of them in New Mexico. I’ve driven 100 miles here and not seen another car on occasion. We’re a big state with not many people (and most of them are in what we call “cities” here). I can’t get cell reception at my home, and I’m only 15 miles from Albuquerque.
Harding County is over 2000 square miles and has about 600 residents.
Plenty out west that close for the winter yet some nitwit gives it a try.
I had a harrowing experience about 25 years ago hiking a trail in northern New Hampshire (not far from Maine). A snowstorm barreled in quicker than expected and by the time I made it back to the trailhead, my car was buried in six inches of fresh snow and it was getting dark. I managed to get back to the main highway but had several miles of unplowed back road to travel on. Almost went off the road several times and if I did, it might have ended badly.
This was before cell phones and GPS. Had my Rand McNally maps to get around!
I’ve been on some lonely roads, but never on any roads that have NO cars at all. the most desolate were some roads in Colorado with high passes that were closed. Locals know not to go up them, and there aren’t tourists in the mid-spring months to go snooping on them.
The loneliest non-mountain stretch of highway I’ve been on is a north-south strip of Nebraska near the Wyoming border. Endless miles of grass...
I bet the Alaska-Canada highway wins for boredom, though I’ve never been up there. Days and days driving through forest.
There are, most definitely, places where cells phones don’t work and the weather is dangerous. West Texas, parts of Nevada, and Arizona, and even eastern Colorado come to mind. It makes life exciting, though.
“Is there really any road or highway left in the US where you would be in serious trouble if your car and cell phone died?”
Yes, we have plenty of those roads in Wyoming. One thing you learn around here is to tell someone where you’re going and then plan on checking in when you get there.
If you don’t check in then someone will come find you.
But if you go into the wilderness on your own and don’t tell anyone where you’re going then you’re on your own.
There’s a lot of rusted out cars and trucks out in the wilderness and each and every one of them translates into a story where someone drove out there and either walked back, got rescued, or never came home.
It’s no joke out here.
When the kids were young we drove from Seattle to Las Vegas. I took a lot of two-lane roads that were not very well traveled - but there were other cars once in awhile.
I did take a road that was a less direct route, but would take us by an old volcano cinder. The pavement turned to gravel and then to dirt. We ended up about two hours on the dirt road (mini van with little kids) and never saw anyone or any homes or stuff. Some cows on the road was about it.
Perhaps stupid, but we had plenty of water and food and a fairly new van. The road was good and hard pan. It was really cool to get away from everything and see some stuff. The kids liked it too. I don’t recall about cell phone coverage.
Several roads in the back country of the Florida Glades....
The Gators or Pythons might get you first...
I’ve spent three trips wandering around the west. You are not in bad shape most anywhere if you stay on the paved roads. The minute you branch off, there are places in the remote western areas where you won’t see a car for a while. And it’s a long walk everywhere.
If your car and phone die on S. Ashland Ave. in the West Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, you could potentially find yourself in a little bit of trouble.
Let me know what they tell you.
I’ll consider moving there as well.
Road, yes.
Especially in winter.
Roads leading to camps or park that are closed or only lightly used in the winter. They have caretakers but they might get out a couple of times a month on a supply run. So you could have a long wait.
“really any”
Believe it or not, all over.
I lived near a search and rescue guy and asked him what he did most of the time, figuring it’d be an easy sit around most of the time.
But no, most common S&R was for cars lost in median strips or on edge of highway where no one has any idea where they are because the foliage is so high it completely obscures the vehicle.
And we lived in the Metro DC area.
I mean any place where you might not see another car for a few days go by?/
I found a road above the Minisink Reservoir the NYC gets its' water supply from that would qualify.
But northern New Hampshire and Maine have real boonies roads in areas with no cell service.
A few years ago I was blocking a side road during a stage rally in northern NH.
An Irish team had a shifter cable break right in front of us.
I pulled their car out of the way, and after that stage was done was given permission to tow them back to the service area.
It was cold and snowing so the driver and navigator took turns in my Range Rover to warm up.
To avoid rally stages, I had to take a route through many miles of a maze of logging roads.
After about an hour, the driver asked me if I knew where I was going.
I told him, yes, exactly, and in another hour or so we would reach the service area.
I mentioned that had they taken a wrong turn, perhaps in a few years some logger or hunter might find their bones.
He asked the size of the forest, and when I told him, he was in shock, saying it was larger than Ireland.
When we go into those areas with our Unimogs, we carry our own extraction equipment, camping gear and food to last for a few weeks if needed, as well as the means to procure more food if needed.
Also a Rokon Trailbreaker as an emergency get out bike.
We have traveled there for three days of a holiday weekend and at times gone 2 days without seeing another pwerson, then only a very few.
I have been in places in the Sierras of California, the boonies of Nevada, Utah and Colorado that are the same, as well as in Pennsylvania.
Today I was in parts of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont on my Skidoo Expedition snowmobile where you could see by the snow from a storm 2 days ago, I was the first one since it, and will probably be the only one until the weekend.
Later this week I plan on going to even more remote areas of NH and VT.
I rode for about 2 hours without seeing another person today.
No cell service on most of it.
If I had the opportunity, I think I would rather travel US395 than US Route 50. Make a side trip into Death Valley National Park, and the Manson ranch.