Let's play "How the hell did I get here and what the fuck is that?"

[struggle4progress]

Tell a true story about how you got who knows where and what you saw there

About a quarter of a century ago, we took a "shortcut" down a backroad in western Maryland, based on what somebody in the car dimly remembered from maybe twenty-five years before that. The road started out OK, but as we bumped along, the asphalt deteriorated and finally we stopped, looking towards an increasingly washed-out roadway littered with boulders of pavement scrap, which we decided not to attempt. There was no way to determine whether anyone had remembered correctly -- but if this was no longer a useful shortcut, if it had once been. We saw something odd beside the car and got out to look: it was the old tristate boundary marker

[hippywife]

1. Almost thirteen years ago (I know because

it was after we were first married) we went over to Arkansas to camp at Devil's Den State Park. There was a dotted line on the map when we got closer that indicated a gravel road that looked like a short cut so we took it. We ended up driving all over that mountain top, around and around. The road was horrible with big boulders only partially submerged under the surface of the "road." We were in my husband's pickup truck, thank goodness, coz my car never would have made that trip.

While up there we saw a roadrunner, and utility trucks up there installing phone service for the very first time. However one stretch that had maybe three houses had a neighborhood watch sign on it.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. In that same area of Arkansas, a friend of mine and I took a drive where we

played "have you ever been down that road before?". We knew we coud retrace our route and get back to where we recognized something, so we drove for quite a long way, all on dirt roads. We finally saw a couple of guys fishing on a creek bank and we asked them where we were. I guess they had never played the game because they immediately assumed we were lost (two women out in the woods) and kept trying to give us directions to Fayetteville. It took a little explaining to convince them that we knew how to get home, we just didn't know where we were. As it turned out, had driven from just north of Van Buren, almost to Prairie Grove, entirely on dirt roads, a distance of nearly 60 miles. We ate lunch there on the creek and then headed back the way we had come to go back to our campsite. It was an interesting day.

[MrScorpio]

3. Tales of Garrett County

Tell them the story about the Living Scarecrow. Go ahead, go ahead!

[MiddleFingerMom]

4. Three couples, jammed into one car and coming back from a nice dinner out...

.
...on the Kentucky/Tennessee border and we decided to take someone's dimly-remembered
"shortcut" home. The road went from highway to old state highway to paved road to dirt
road to twin-rut dirt tracks in a short amount of distance/time.
.
All of a sudden, we realized that we were in nothing but a whole FIELD of ruts.
.
Somehow, we had driven into somebody's freshly plowed field.
.
It had rained that day... MUCH mud -- and once we stopped, there was a great deal of
difficulty getting started again, let alone turn around and go back the way we came (slight
incline DOWN in the direction we were facing).
.
The three women slogged through the mud to the edge of the field and the three men
took turns driving and pushing while the wheels spun and slung mud like some sort of
demented mud-slush snowblower.
.
Took us a good 20-30 minutes. Turned out another back state highway had been about
50 yards in front of us perpendicular to the way we had been headed. The police sat
there on the edge of the highway for the last 5 minutes or so of our ordeal... too
smart to approach us where they might have been compelled to FUCKING HELP!!!!
.
When we finally got back on the "road", one of the women, in her truly adorable
Southern accent said, "You boys look lahk you've been dipped in shit."
.
.
.
.
.
.
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Truer words were never spoken.
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