It suddenly occurs to you that you haven't seen another car in over thirty minutes. You look in the rear view to that once great mountain range, now reduced to dots - like land disappearing as a ship dips below the curvature of the earth. "Cast away," you whisper, replaying scenes in your head from the movie by that name. Wilson... Then it's gone. Before you is a rolling sea of land. Naked. Treeless. Endless. Rippling with green and golden seaweed. The road, your road, seems to unravel over it like a concrete carpet, disappearing at a vanishing point dozens or hundreds of miles ahead. Herds of clouds migrate through the great skies dragging dark shadows across the plains. Minutes turn to hours or hours to minutes. Then a glint – a vehicle. It appears as if a mirage from the vanishing point. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. It passes in a 90mph WHOOSH and is gone. You're alone again, traversing the great sea of middle America, hugging the rugged and wild two-laner known as Route 89.
Stretching from the Canadian Boarder all the way to Arizona, Route 89, also known as the National Parks Highway, passes through some of America's rarest and most beautiful landscapes. If one were to stay with it through its entirety, they'd pass seven National Parks, the Big Sky prairie lands of Montana and Wyoming, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the dry lands of Arizona and Utah. You won't find this highway on many of the Most Scenic Routes in America lists, but it's easily the most beautifully intimidating road I've ever driven. The picture above was taken on the northern stretch between #glaciernationalpark and #Yellowstone.