If you’re looking for a truly solo road trip experience, look no farther than the Loneliest Road: US Highway 50, where it crosses Nevada. The mostly two-lane road traverses the Great Basin desert, which consists of basin-and-range topography: wide, flat, parched valleys punctuated by parallel mountain ranges.

I wasn’t alone for the whole trip; the secret is definitely out about the Loneliest Road (thanks to Nevada tourism plugging it as a destination all its own), and there were other lookie-loos like me, as well as the occasional long-haul trucker. But because of the geography, what that translated to was little knots of traffic stuck behind trucks on the mountain passes, and then long, long stretches of empty road, like in the above drawing.

I lost count of the number of historic barns and rusted vintage pickups along the way, but that wasn’t unexpected…

What I didn’t expect was having so much roadside reading material! I love documenting my trips through found signage, but I think this place set a record for the most verbage in one, otherwise empty, place.