You’re cruising down the highway.
Maybe you’re blasting your favorite tunes. Maybe you’re fighting with your passengers. But one thing is certain, the engine is sputtering, and as your vehicle rolls to a stop on the shoulder, you notice the gas gauge has bottomed out.
It’s a bummer when this happens, but nine times out of ten, you’ll be within a mile of a gas station. It’s that ten percent of the time when there isn’t a gas station in sight that you really start to run through all the four-letter words.
Some places you can run out of gas are an inconvenience, but other spots can ruin your whole freaking life. Here are just a few of the worst of the worst places to run out of gas.
I-70, Utah
One of the very worst places to run out of gas in the United States is the middle of the 106-mile stretch of Interstate 70 running from Green River, Utah to Salina, Utah. In the over 50,000 miles of US interstates, this is the longest stretch without so much as an exit, never mind a gas station. If your car unexpectedly grinds to a halt, at least you’ve got 50 miles or so of desert scenery to enjoy on your journey to get some help. As you might have guessed, cell phone reception is spotty at best.
But things could be worse…
Stuart Highway, Australia
Let’s imagine you are instead driving on the Stuart Highway, the longest north to south highway in Australia, for example. The road trip from Adelaide to Darwin spans the full length of the Stuart Highway, almost 1900 miles in total. Along the way, it stops in Alice Springs, a remote city nestled among the MacDonnell Ranges at the geographic center of Australia. But one span of this trip in particular, the trip from Glendambo to Coober Pedy, is over 150 miles of nothing. By the time you’re 20 miles out of either tiny town, you can kiss your last cell coverage goodbye. There’s not a ton of traffic here, so you’ll be walking up to 75 miles unless you can hitch a ride across this flat barren wasteland from a kangaroo, emu, or camel, all of which outnumber human Aussies by at least a hundredfold. Unless you love wallabies, this might be one of the worst places period.
But, again, things could somehow still be worse…
The Road of Bones, Russia
You could be driving down the M56 Kolyma Highway in the Russian Far East when your automobile coasts to a stop on the permafrost. The frozen wilderness of the autonomous Sakha Republic is like nowhere on earth. The region has fewer people than the state of Montana (almost 1 million), spread out over the area of Montana, California, Texas, and Alaska combined. The Kolyma Highway is called the “Road of Bones” because it was built by forced labor, and many of those expired prisoners are actually buried under the road.
The Kolyma Highway doesn’t have cell reception. Heck, it doesn’t even have asphalt. Most of the 1,200-mile road is “paved” with compacted gravel or clay. Summer rains can blanket the road surface in mud. If you run out of gas, there’s at least hope another driver can give you a lift to the nearest gas station. But when you’re out of gas and stuck in 3 feet of mud in the furthest Siberian wilderness, it might be time to get a new car.
The Road of Bones is truly the worst of the worst places to run out of gas. If you ever find yourself crossing any of these fuel-less roads, bring an extra gas can or two.
What’s the worst experience you’ve had running out of gas? “Click to Comment” below.