This paper appears, word for word, as Justin Halverson wrote it in his undergraduate days at BYU.

As what some might call the "fifth wheel" of our road trippin' group, I was glad to be along for the ride, sharing my love of adventure on the open road with these good friends who always made me feel wanted and appreciated--and I like to think it wasn't just because I was the one with the car. No, it had to be something more. It must have been the hope that I'd break out the Neil Diamond Christmas tape. Or true friendship--yeah, I'm thinkin' that's more like it! I am grateful to have been blessed with such wonderful friends and examples in my life--then and now.

I can't say that I remember everything happening exactly the way Justin has recorded it here. I bet we'd all tell a slightly different version of the same story, as details of these restless wanderings have gotten a little sketchy. But his skillful writing describes quite accurately the way things were back in the days when road trips ruled the night.

28 September 1997

--John Steinbeck, from Travels with Charley

In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck writes that when someone has caught the "virus of restlessness" and the "urge to be someplace else is upon [him]...the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going" (3). The reason I gave for our road trips--in the beginning, at least--was that we were looking for better fare than we could get in the dorm cafeteria. "Well, then," people would ask, "Why don't you just go to some place in Provo? Why do you have to drive out into the boonies to eat?" I'd say something about a quest for uncommon places to dine, a mystical attraction to the small-town-Utah greasy spoon. "Plus," I'd add grinning, "it's fun." That would usually produce an sardonic shake of the head and sometimes a smiled, "Whatever"; in any case, whoever was asking would almost always give up trying to figure us out, having proven to themselves, perhaps, that they were the mature ones, the logical, the sane. Or maybe (and, I think, most likely) they just thought we were weird, and probably pretty geeky, to spend our evenings driving around rural Utah looking for patty melts and pastrami sandwiches.

"We" were Rachel and Julie from Huntington Beach, California; Mike and Jared from Sandy, Utah; and myself, from Troutdale, Oregon. College freshmen living in the dorms at BYU, we formed the core of the crew. We were the late-night road trip regulars, although we were joined occasionally by other friends. And though our trips really did start as searches for quaint mom-and-pop restaurants in rural Utah, we knew, even then, though we never talked about it, that there was something more to them. That first semester at college was the longest any of us had ever been away from home. I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster. One day--one hour--I'd be up, thrilled by what I was studying, overjoyed at the endless number of pretty girls to date, ecstatic to be on my own. Then I'd plummet into despair at the difficulty of my classes, doubt in my desirability to all those pretty girls, and pain when I thought of home and its familiar and familial comfort. I know that we all rode that rollercoaster, and I think that is why we loved our road trips so much.

Although each trip was unique, they all shared certain characteristics. We rarely left before dark, and we shunned roads with more than one lane in each direction. Sometimes we went in Mike's gigantic gas-guzzling Ford Bronco, which we nicknamed Old Blue, mostly to remind us that under the rust and all those scratches, there was once a coat of royal blue. When we could, however, we'd save money by cramming into Beauty, Jared's immaculately kept Ford Escort sedan. In speaking of Beauty, I use sedan with caution; describing her, it seems such a strong word. Painted white, she had a dark blue vinyl interior; hanging from the rear-view mirror was a yellow and green '93 graduation tassel from Hillcrest High School. In the cassette player was a tape of songs dubbed by Julie and Rachel. To this day, hearing Alabama's "Fiddle in the Band," or John Denver's "Annie's Song," I can close my eyes and be traveling on a winding rural road through the dark and silent Tintic Mountains (I describe them so because I've never seen them in the light) or hiding from the sheriff of Copperton in a snowy park because we'd violated the ten o'clock curfew (we'd found the park while looking for the copper mine whose lights we'd seen from the other side of the Salt Lake Valley).

Food was always a part of our trips--at first we'd stop at little cafes and restaurants: Jerry's Dairy/Burger Barn in Salem, Granny's in Heber, Porter's Place in Lehi, and Fat Jack's Pizza in Springville were some of our favorites. Hot chocolate bought at 7-Eleven was a later component of our road trips. Filling the styrofoam cup 3/4 full, we'd add ten or more of the flavored liquid creamer packets to make a concoction almost too rich to finish. My favorite combination was six Swiss chocolate creamers, two French vanilla and two amaretto. Sometimes we'd pick up a warm loaf of French bread at Albertsons--the next day we'd have to borrow the dorm vacuum cleaner and an extension cord to clean up the inevitable crumbs from Beauty's carpet, seats and crevices. Another occasional treat was chocolate orange sticks, or chocolate fingers as we called them, trying to sound as much like Colonel Klinck as possible.

As the school year progressed, our tendency towards exploring the unknown yielded to an affinity for certain places we'd already discovered. Eureka, a hamlet west of Santaquin and past "the land of Goshen" (we had a flair for the exotic), became our most frequented spot. Just out of town to the west is a monument to the silver miners who laboriously extracted that metal from the desert hills in the 1800's. Beside the towering wooden stand that marked the one-time entrance to the mine, the stone altar-like monument is big enough for five to stand on, if they're careful. Late in the last semester, almost every road trip began with a visit to the little town. The cement block two-story buildings packed tightly together and shoved up against the mountain hills on either side of the main (and maybe only) road remind me more of the equally tiny village in a shallow valley of Luxembourg where I used to live than any place I've seen in the US.

The greatest road trip of all began with a drive to Eureka. We took pictures and threw snowballs at each other, went through the usual jokes: "Here we are. Eureka." "Yeah, well you don't smell so good yourself." We didn't stay long--February is cold in the Tintics and we had already finished our hot chocolate. Julie had to study for a biology exam, so we piled back into Beauty and headed back to Provo and the dorms. All the way back we tried to convince Julie to stay with us but she remained firm. We dropped her off outside Q-Hall, but although it was already close to midnight, none of us was ready for bed. We decided to keep driving.

Because we'd gone south before, we headed north, into Orem. After another cup of hot chocolate and a half-hour of wandering through side streets, Mike announced that he needed to stop. Jared piloted Beauty into the closest place likely to have what Mike (and the rest of us) needed--the Orem Cemetery. Sure enough, the bathrooms were open and clean. Mike and I finished first and left Jared to his task. When we heard the automatic hand dryer vroom on, we leaned, grinning, on the bathroom door, holding it shut. Jared tried the knob and must have heard our snickers as he threw his weight against the door. He backed up and ran at it, and we gave a little, but slammed the door closed as he retreated for another try. Again Jared ran at the door, and again we held him in. As he backed up again, Mike grabbed my arm and we stepped back from the door. Seconds later, it burst open, spilling Jared out onto the snow-covered sidewalk. Mike and I were laughing so hard we could barely stand up. Rachel came out of her side of the restroom just as Jared regained his feet and chucked as much snow as he could grab at us. The wild throw made him lose his balance and he slipped on the ice and fell again. By now Mike and I had sunk to the ground, hot tears streaming from our eyes, our laughter steaming in puffs into the chill night. Rachel was still trying to figure out what was happening, but she was laughing, too. Jared, who never held a grudge, couldn't hold his scowl either. We lay there giggling on the ground, not in a cemetery, not in Orem or Utah or anywhere but Together, and happy to be there.

We climbed back in the car, accompanied by a few residual giggles, and were off. We dispute what happened next; we only know for sure that it was one or two o'clock on a Sunday morning. I distinctly remember telling Jared to take us back to the dorms so that we could get some sleep, but Rachel says that it was I who saw the road sign to Manti and proposed that we go see the temple there. Whoever made it, the suggestion was all it took to put on a road heading south.

I don't remember much about the drive. I know that it was a clear night, and post-Christmas January-cold. The nearness and warmth of my friends in the car made the winter stars, frigid and distant as their night black background, seem close and warm, like their summer cousins. Near the horizon to the east and west, where the mountains spread darkly across the earth like a melted black Crayola, the sky was a blue deeper than my imagination, just barely less black than the mountains themselves. When I looked long and hard enough I could see the wavy line between earth and heaven, and as the miles rolled by under Beauty's tires, I traced that line into my mind. I still think that contrast on dark sky on darker mountains is the most lovely of Utah's beauties.

We stopped to get lost in little towns on the way; in Ephraim we tried to get close enough to some deer in a field by the road to take their pictures, and I seem to remember visiting another cemetery in Moroni. Just after dawn we arrived in Manti. Stretching sore legs in the crisp Sunday morning air, we walked to the base of the hill where the Mormon temple stands. There is a distinct sensation I get when I'm near a temple. The buildings themselves seem far more solid and permanent than others, and the air is laden with a heavy calm. There are always birds singing, but even they seem reverent, and do not chirp out all at once; their solos or duets give the impression of beauty meticulously worked out, like a poem. The trees, like those in the cemetery, seem aware of where they are planted, and carry an added dignity that their more random forest siblings lack. The grass is the best-cared-for I have ever seen, and at Manti it stands out in quick, vivid contrast to the brown mountain hills behind.

We stayed awhile there at the foot of the temple hill. Finally we moved back to the car, quieter and more tired than we had been in Orem, but no less glad. Our church meetings started in three hours--if we went straight home we would make it in time. Jared was sleepy, so I offered to drive, even though I hadn't slept all night, either. We decided that we could take the interstate just this once, but Manti was some distance from I-15, the nearest junction at the end of Spanish Fork Canyon. Rachel and Mike fell asleep almost immediately in each other's arms in the back seat.

It took us only an hour to get to the canyon, but by that time I could barely keep my eyes open. It is a strange phenomena that when a person gets tired at the wheel, his sense of danger diminishes, and his confidence in his ability to drive increases. If he keeps driving, he starts to hallucinate. I started to see cars swerve right in front of me. Panicked, I'd tap the brakes and the cars would vanish. Jared must have noticed my random braking because he offered several times to drive. I declined, saying that although I was tired, I could keep going. We were almost home, after all. When I commented on how pretty the lake on the south side of the road was, however, Jared insisted that I stop, saying in his characteristically euphemistic manner that he needed to make sure that the bushes had enough to drink. This seemed reasonable, so I pulled over. He got out, came around the car and asked if he could see the keys. Too tired to realize that he hadn't had nearly enough time to accomplish his irrigation objectives or that keys were completely unnecessary for such a project, I got out of the car and told him that he could get them because I needed to go to the bathroom.

When I got back, I climbed into the open passenger-side door and Jared, already belted in, took off. We got back to Provo without incident and just in time to shower, put on our Sunday clothes and walk down to church. Julie was there, as was my roommate, Trevor, and both of them looked at us quizzically, shaking their heads at our sheepish grins.

Three years later, we still try to go at least as far as Eureka once a semester. I love the drive--we don't feel so much like rebels anymore, but being out on the road late at night with each other we are somehow able to talk more freely with each other about what we're feeling. On a recent road trip, a couple of hours talking with Rachel about my difficult relationship with Julie brought me more comfort than hours of confusing conversations with my roommates. Problems seem more easily resolved, our friendship more condensed within Beauty's doors. It was a long time before Jared had the heart to tell me that there is no lake in Spanish Fork Canyon, and though I've never been able to find it on a map, I still think it's there.