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Many years ago, we went to a cross-country meet in Soda Springs, Idaho. It was a beautiful fall day, a perfect day for the runners. It wasn’t blazing hot, but it wasn’t cold either.
Before we left, I told a friend where we were going, and he asked, “Have you ever taken the shortcut through Bone? It’s a beautiful drive over mountains through rolling pastures.”
Bone is a small town in the hills east of Idaho Falls, and when I say small, I mean small. The town has two permanent residents and a small country store that primarily does business in the summer when ranchers run cattle in the area. I’d been to Bone for some cross-country meets, but I told my friend I never knew there was a road from Soda Springs through there.
“It sure beats the miserable traffic on the interstate,” he said.
While we were waiting for the runners to cross the finish line, I talked to my wife about it. Thinking of driving a lovely country road rather than the interstate sounded good to me.
When the meet was over, our family loaded into our van and headed into the hills on the road my friend had told me about. We had just left town when I thought to check the gas gauge. We were around half full, but our van would make it all the way home on that much, so I didn’t worry about going back to fill up.
It wasn’t long before the pavement ended, and the road turned to gravel. I felt we could endure the rougher road since it would be for fewer miles, and I knew it was paved from Bone into Idaho Falls. However, the road seemed to stretch on forever. It got rougher, and I slowed from fifty to forty. It still got rougher, and I dropped nearly to thirty.
Then, suddenly, the gravel ended, and the road became a dirt farm road with only enough room for one vehicle. I knew if we met anyone coming the other way, we would have to find a spot wide enough to slide past each other. However, we never saw anyone else the entire trip.
We followed the dirt road for some time, when suddenly it came to a Y. To take either road, we had to cross a cattle guard. Both roads were rutted and muddy. We could get stuck out there and be in real trouble. I considered turning around, but I realized more than half of the gas was gone, and we couldn’t make it back to Soda Springs.
I felt that if we had gone far enough that more than half of our gas was gone, we had to be close. I chose the left road because it seemed most traveled, and we continued on. We went for what seemed like forever, but it was probably only an hour. Of course, an hour is forever when you are on a dirt road going around twenty miles per hour and your gas gauge is dropping precipitously toward empty.
The sun had long gone behind the horizon, and I was beginning to think we were going to spend our night among the sagebrush and cattle, when we suddenly hit a gravel road. I looked at the gas gauge, and we were just above empty. I thought that if we could just get over the hills and hit the pavement on the downward side toward Idaho Falls, I could coast to a gas station.
The gauge continued to drop and hit the empty mark just as we rolled onto the pavement. As we went down a hill, I would let the van coast. As the little gas we had flowed to the front of the tank, the gauge dropped below empty, but as we climbed the next hill, it would show right on the empty mark. As we came down the last stretch, with a stop sign at the bottom, I slowed enough to make sure no one was coming, then coasted through to the gas station about a quarter mile further on. The tank was so empty that I put more gas in than I thought it could hold.
When I talked to my friend about it later and told him it had taken two hours longer than on the interstate, he said, “When I said it was shorter, I meant in distance, not in time.” He then said at the Y that he had taken the right road. He said it went about eight miles and ended, and he had to go back. “You’re lucky you took the left one.”
I decided that tried and true might always be best. However, I know that something can’t become tried and true if you never try it, but next time I might get more information.
