Road Less Traveled - A Documentary by James Beatty

Day-27

August 2, 2006

The sun was just starting to come up as the crew drove into Fillmore Utah arriving at the Spinning Wheel Motel, nearly 10-hours later than planned...

After driving and riding straight through the night and into the early morning, we were all anxious to get to our rooms and get some much needed sleep. Although we had contacted the motel the day before for our reservation, it’s now six in the morning and we were concerned that rooms may no longer be available. We knocked on the door of the motel office and were greeted by a pet Iguana, and a sleepy, but friendly owner, Shawn deWolfe. Lucky for us, Shawn still had a couple of rooms available, and so with minimal unloading of the chase vehicle, by 6:30am the crew got to their rooms and everyone was asleep within minutes.

By the time we all woke it was mid-afternoon and feeling reasonably refreshed, we decided to walk across the street for some pizza. But as we exited our rooms we were again greeted by Iguanas roaming the grounds of the motel and, of course, had to get some footage of them. It was comical to see the guys try to get the attention of the Iguanas while Mathew followed with a camera.

The Spinning Wheel Motel worked out great for us and Shawn was more than accommodating. After hearing about our documentary and the difficulties we encountered the night before, Shawn not only allowed us to checkout very late in the afternoon, he also offered a financial contribution to our project. Thank you Shawn!

After our pizza break it was time to leave Utah and move on to our next stop which, according to our maps, was only a few of hours away. We decided to keep the two bikes up on the trailer and Michael continued to ride his BMW as we headed west to the Nevada border. About an hour into the drive and feeling adventurous we decided to take a “short-cut” through some dirt roads and wide open lava fields. The short-cut was very scenic and the lava fields very interesting, but we were now far from the Trans-Am Trail and far from the only road that showed on our maps… and several miles from any civilization.

Another hour or so of navigating the dirt roads and farm paths, the sun was now dropping closer to the horizon and the sky changed from light blue to a rich red and purple glow - seemed like a perfect backdrop for a few video diaries. So we stopped to setup the cameras in the middle of seemingly nowhere and recapped the events of the past several days on camera. A couple of hours later with the sun now below the horizon, we finished the last video diary and then quickly packed up the cameras and moved on.

Still without the help of any maps and now navigating in the dark with the nearest light an estimated 20-miles to the horizon, we did our best to try to follow the faint lines of the farm paths that would hopefully take us out of these fields and onto a road… any road. Turn after turn we came across locked fences, dead-ends and miscellaneous obstacles, and a few times discovered the path simply disappeared into the fields in front of us. What we assumed would be a fun and adventurous trek across a few fields, turned out to be a frustrating maze with seemingly no way out. As part of the navigational teamwork, Michael rode ahead into the darkness as far as he could and then radioed back to the guys in the chase vehicle with an assessment of whether or not the truck could follow. Finally, after hours of searching for an exit, Michael spotted a light in the distance that was either from a farmhouse or from a street light – either way, if we could all get to that light, it’s a safe assumption that a road would be nearby - if we found an opening in the fence to let us through. And just as this path was starting to disappear in front of us, an unlocked gate in the fence was spotted with a paved road on the other side. Michael radioed the guys in the truck that an exit was found, and with room enough for the chase vehicle to cross over. We were all relieved. We survived the maze.

Back on pavement, a road sign confirmed our location with our map – what started as an adventurous “short-cut” ended up being a detour that took us about five hours out of our way. It was now around 8:00pm and our destination was still to be the Nevada border, about 150 miles away. Frustrated, tired and hungry, there was not a lot of enthusiasm about traveling another 3-hours to reach Nevada. But we pressed on and just before midnight we crossed over the state line and into Baker Nevada, pulling into the appropriately named “Border Motel”. With our reservation confirmed, and again with minimal unloading of the truck, we all found our rooms and were asleep within minutes.