Someday Never Comes

Chapter Two

Grabbing my duffle from the patch of floor I'd dropped it on, I headed for the door.

-----

The World's Loneliest Road, I soon discovered, did not end with Nevada. A few miles from the border, near the turnoff for a town named Baker, a state highway sign spelled out its warning in thick, no bullshit typeface: NO SERVICE NEXT 100 MILES.

Behind the ominous plaque the bleached salt flats stretch out into nothingness in the dim of twilight like an endless earthen ocean.

But Utah, it turned out, was as varied as Nevada had been predictable. The desert I'd started coming to expect gradually shifted, rocky outcroppings and marshy flats punctuating the sweeping expanses of craggy earth.

Then came the mountains.

Rolling and sandy, spotted with ground cover and desiccated brush, they turned steeper and sharper the further east I went; pine trees stubbornly clinging to their slopes on patches of dirt no larger than doormats.

It was the buttes and mesas that really snagged me though. Enough to rip my attention away from the mindless passage of blacktop.

A first since I'd left Seattle.

It was stretching into late morning, a stone's throw outside a tiny valley town where I'd pit-stopped for gas, when I spotted the first of them in the distance. There were the flat topped juts of rock I'd seen in a thousand photographs and reproduced in paint on the walls of every steakhouse with a southwestern flare. They were as familiar to me as the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge, but up close they were arresting. Towering outcroppings of red clay rock protruding from the earth like broken teeth in the jawbone of some ancient giant.

I'd seen desert rock formations before, but the deserts of eastern Washington had nothing like this and I felt my curiosity peak.

Looking back at that moment, as I eased up on the gas for a better look at the passing walls of rock, it was probably the turning point. A linchpin for everything that was to come.

-----

It was Colorado that threw down the final straw, fanned that initial spark of interest I'd felt traversing the valleys of Utah, until it finally got the better of me.

The place was drowning under the weight of its own landmarks.

With every mile I went into the state, a new sign sprang up, announcing yet another park or overlook or scenic byway. The majority, starting with the uninformatively named National Monument, I'd never heard of, but their sheer volume was enough to start me considering a little sightseeing.

It was early evening and I was making another cautionary stop for gas (between Utah and Nevada, I'd managed to develop a healthy paranoia), when I spotted a familiar landscape amongst the wracks of local attraction flyers. My national parks trivia knowledge might have been on the scarce side, but even I'd spent enough Sunday mornings mildly hungover and watching travel show reruns on WETA, to recognize Mesa Verde. Or perhaps not so mildly hungover, as I hadn't honestly remembered the site was in Colorado.

"This is near here?" I asked, pulling a pamphlets from the display.

It wasn't. I saw that the same second the question had left my mouth. There was a vague sort of map of western Colorado printed on the pamphlet's backside that declared "here" to be somewhere called Grand Junction. The star marking the park was a ways farther south. A good ways. Almost at the border with New Mexico.

"What's that, honey?" the clerk asked, slow blinking at me in confusion.

I couldn't help quirking an incredulous eyebrow at that. Was I honestly being flirted with by a teenage girl in a Blake Shelton t-shirt?

Wrong damn tree, wrong damn forest, not even counting the two decades worth of age difference.

She'd zeroed in on the pamphlet while I mulling that over. She shook her head. "Oh, no. That's down south. Like, a couple hours?" Finished dumping the last of my acquisitions in a shopping bag, she pushed the green dinosaur emblazoned sack across the counter. "You have a nice night," she said, giving me an inexplicably doubtful (was there something on my face?) once-over. "And drive careful."

I beat a hasty exit to check my teeth for wayward jerky chunks.

Outside the sun was retreating behind a western mountain range and a bank of fat, dusky purple clouds. It looked like rain was in the forecast and not of the light drizzle variety. Distracted by that, I was moving to pull out my keys before I realized I was still holding the Mesa Verde brochure.

Unlocking the car, I slid in and unfolded the paper across my steering wheel.

There was the usual blurb of historical background, photos of cliff dwellings and smaller maps of walking paths. Not thrill a minute reading, but still, I was intrigued.

I flipped it over to the main map again, and then, on impulse, reached over and turned on my GPS, which had remained off thus far in my semi-aimless road trip. A little typing and the computer informed me that the park was adjacent to the town of Cortez- another vaguely familiar place name- and could be reached in three and a half hours. It was indeed near the New Mexico border. Not exactly 'on my way,' so far as I'd planned it.

On the other hand, I'd have to veer further south at some point if I planned to make for the Carolinas. And it wasn't like I was exactly running on a set schedule.

"What the hell," I said aloud.