Father and Son Stranded Adventure

homer and bart simpson broke down
Father and Son brokedown

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Father and son adventure; it’s always interesting when there’s car trouble out in the middle of nowhere…

This is the image I wasn’t quite satisfied with because the endless road in the background was not really as visible as I wanted it to be.  This dirt road is called Lund Highway and leads to the small almost ghost town of Lund, UT.  I believe it has a population of two.  Not sure if that is two households or two hermits, but either way there are lots of empty and abandoned buildings.

I had many experiences as a kid with exploring the deserts of southern Utah.  As part of this exploration processes there were always many predicaments we got ourselves into.   One such experience was driving a “shortcut” because we were almost out of gas, then finding the hard way that the shortcut was blocked off by a new lake from recent rains.  This particular predicament was with my brother and a good friend of mine, Zack Fitzwater.  We could not turn around because we didn’t have enough gas to go back.  Just forward.  My friend Zack came up with the brilliant idea of hydroplaning the small truck across the massive puddle.  We didn’t know how deep it was, so we made sure he got a good running start.  He got up to about 60mph before he created one of the largest splashes I have ever seen, slamming into the puddle.  The water engulfed the truck and he just kept gunning it.  The truck skidded across the puddle and came out the other side – completely dead.  The engine wouldn’t turn over.  It just clicked.  So now we were stranded.  It was about fifteen miles to the nearest help and this was before cell phones.  So we just sat there.  Waited… waited some more.  after what seemed like forever we tried to start it and VROOM! it started up.  We rocked the truck on fumes till we arrived at my friends house.  We siphoned gas from his truck and then we were back in business.

I can guarantee that if we hadn’t had the bad experience of getting stranded I would not have remembered so much.  I look back at these times with fondness and they inspired my toy photography today.