A Long and Dark Road
This was just part of our honeymoon, but it was quite a part.
This was the late 1990s, before many people had cell phones, and when phone coverage was pretty spotty anyway. We did a little California tour. First we went to San Fran for three days, then rented a car and drove to Napa for a day. At the end of that Napa day, we drove to Lake Tahoe, where we would spend three more days before driving back to Sacramento and flying home. This story happens on the highway from Napa to Tahoe.
We left Napa in the evening, after dinner. It was early fall, so it was still light out, but by the time we got to Sacramento, the sun was setting. We’d be driving the rest of the way in the dark.
Let me pause for a moment here and describe the rental car. It was a crappy four cylinder GM that could barely get out of its own way. Apart from being an unfamiliar car, it was downright unpleasant to drive. There was virtually no road feel at all; it was more like I was making suggestions to the car, and it was grudgingly relenting.
We approached the mountains in short order, but had no idea what we were driving through, because it was dark. Those of you who live in the sparse West know that when I say “dark,” I mean “there’s not a light on for miles and miles in any direction.” It was pitch black.
Not only pitch black, but extra pitch black, because now we were passing through (unbeknownst to us) Eldorado National Forest. The road here goes up and down long, steep hills, and takes some fairly tight turns from time to time. Oh, did I also mention that it’s mostly two lanes, with an occasional extra lane uphill for trucks to climb slowly in and let people by?
So here we are, on our honeymoon, in an awful rental car, trying to navigate a narrow mountain road in absolute blackness. I’m driving at a reasonable speed, at the speed limit as much as possible, but not knowing when I’m about to send us plummeting to our doom is making me very cautious.
Another vehicle comes up behind, riding very close, a pickup truck. I try to appease by speeding up to what I feel is a more than reasonable clip, but that doesn’t help. Dude turns his brights on, and since his truck is considerably taller than my economy rental, I’m pretty much blinded. I turn the rearview away, but can’t manage to do anything about the manual side mirror.
Finally, one of those extra lanes comes around, and the guy does a jerky crazy pass. In this moment of weakness, I flip him off and flash my brights at him when he gets in front of me. I figure whatever. I see it’s a yellow Ford Ranger, and there’s a passenger.
Oh, no. He falls back and gets behind me again.
I only have one choice in this situation: put some distance in between me and him. I have to speed up the mountain.
So I floor it, taking hills and turns as fast as the S-rated tires will allow. I am managing to put some distance between us, somehow, and I start looking for a place to escape. But on this road, through a forest, there’s just not any place like that.
The best I could do was find a wide shoulder to pull off on. The guy was back behind a corner when I pulled over and stopped. I shut the lights off and waited.
Here come headlights, that has to be him. I’m hoping he just goes blowing by without seeing me. The lights aren’t going as fast as I’d hoped. He’s pulling over behind me.
Thankfully, he stopped his truck a few car lengths back. My new wife is looking out the rear window, she’s telling me to go, go, go. “No,” I say, as he opens his door and steps out. “Wait.”
I watch him in the side mirror, coming up to my car. My wife is screaming at me now. Wait for it. Wait for it.
As soon as he got up to the rear door of the car, that’s when I took off again. Now he had to run back to his truck and get in, I’d bought myself about ten seconds.
Now I’m back to driving, focused. My wife is quiet now. I’m looking, looking, for any road to actually turn off on, get out of view from the highway. I’ve got enough distance between us now that I haven’t seen him in the rearview for a while, but I know he’s back there. I know he’s coming.
I remember seeing a road sign for the town of Strawberry. There was a little general store with a gas pump or two, but it was late at night, and it was closed. Just beyond it, however, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a road off to the right. I dived down it off the highway. No idea what was down there, but I could get us out of sight of the road.
That extra pitch black I mentioned got blacker as we crept down this one lane road through the dense forest. Now I was starting to wonder if I could even get myself turned around. We might be trapped.
As luck would have it, the road opened up to a large clearing, apparently paved, or maybe hard packed gravel. In any event, I could drive on it, so I got myself turned around so I could face nose out. Backed way up in the corner.
I shut the lights off. I turned the car off. We waited.
I don’t think we even breathed for two minutes, sitting perfectly still. We could conceivably sit here till morning if we had to, or at least long enough that truck guy would be far away.
Suddenly, headlights, approaching from the left, from the direction of the highway. We are frozen. The lights clear the trees to our left, and it’s the yellow Ford Ranger. We’re frozen.
He drives by, and keeps going down this side road. We have evaded him.
My wife and I look at each other incredulously. A long second passes and I start the car. I quickly put it in drive and slink out of the cul-de-sac and back up to the road before I turn the headlights back on.
Truck guy is gone, but it’s not until we get into Tahoe that I’m able to breathe easier.
Story credit: Reddit / Nougat