Well, it wasn’t the Loneliest Road, but I certainly had a lonely-road solo drive on the day before I crossed Nevada. I was in southeastern Utah, and I wanted to tick another highway off my road-trip bucket list: State Route 12, which cuts through part of the mostly-wilderness, sprawling, painted-desert expanse of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The highway itself, completed in 1940 by CCC road builders, is legendary—but because of its remote location, I had never managed to get there on one of my previous Southwest trips.

I knew the drive would have spectacular scenery,

and the squiggles on the map promised a fun challenge of curving blacktop.

And I’ve done enough winding desert drives in the Southwest to expect surprises along the way—

—but the road pulled a few fast ones on me, all the same.

I rounded a blind curve to find this fella standing calmly on the yellow line. I screeched to a halt (and thus vindicated myself for sticking to the speed limit), stopping just a foot or two from him, and he didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even move—he made me go around to continue on my way, while he stared me down.

Still, once my heart rate returned to normal, I tried to remind myself that maybe he wasn’t interrupting my solo road trip—maybe I was interrupting his.