The world’s longest 70 miles

Every week I drive Wyoming Highway 450 from Newcastle to Wright — a journey so vast, so epic, and so emotionally transformative that Homer should have written an epic tragedy about it. And he would have, except that Mrs. Homer “misplaced” his pickup and thermos of lukewarm gas station coffee. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it!

On a map, it’s 70 miles. In real life, it’s somewhere between “quick errand” and “interstellar voyage,” leaning toward the latter. I leave Newcastle at an ungodly hour and arrive in Wright sometime during the next geological era with a full beard and several decades of accumulated dust and grime on me.

Highway 450 is usually empty, which sounds peaceful until you realize that empty in Wyoming doesn’t mean quiet. It means you are the only moving object in a landscape that appears to have been abandoned by God, time and possibly reality itself. There is also the occasional deer or 100,000-strong antelope herd. That becomes really interesting when you realize those beasts are wearing flack jackets and carrying triple-decker cowboy pistols. These look like normal revolvers, but the antelope have used Wyoming tactics to scale them to grain silos in size, and they fire a bullet the dimensions of a bus. If you ever run into that herd, take my advice. Turn around and flee as fast as you can.

The rolling plains stretch forever, gently rising and falling like the world’s least-enthusiastic roller coaster. The hoodoos pop up occasionally, looking like ancient stone creatures frozen in mid-conversation:
“Should we warn them about the weather?”
“Nah, let ’em find out for themselves.”

Those hoodoos are rude. But, I always do find out, mostly because Wyoming isn’t subtle about the weather.

One week it’s so cold the air hurts my face. Not metaphorically — physically. The kind of cold where your truck makes noises like it’s reconsidering its life choices. The next week it’s blazing hot, the sun hovering directly above the highway like it’s trying to personally interrogate me.

The road conditions rotate through:

• Dry and perfect

• Snow-covered and terrifying

• Windy enough to legally qualify as flight training

I’ve driven through snowstorms so thick I couldn’t see the hood of my own vehicle, which is impressive because I know it’s right there. I’ve also driven in sunshine so bright I’m pretty sure I developed a mild tan on the bottom of my feet.

But the real excitement — the true boss battle of Highway 450 — is the occasional oversized loads.

You’ll be cruising along at 70 mph, feeling powerful, free and almost far from happy… when suddenly the horizon develops a problem. At first it looks like a large building. Then a small mountain. Then you realize it’s a truck hauling something that used to be part of a nuclear submarine or the Death Star.

The oversized load is always going 12 miles per hour. Always. Never 11. Never 13. Exactly 12. This is not a speed — it is a mandated life choice.

There is no passing. There is no escape. You join a small convoy, a deeply bonded support group of vehicles, all of you staring at the same blinking yellow lights like moths slowly dying of boredom.

Time stops. Your coffee goes cold. Your life flashes before your eyes, and the flashes are mostly just more of Highway 450.

Sometimes the load is so wide it occupies multiple time zones, meaning traffic is now a philosophical concept rather than a physical one. You’re not driving anymore. You’re merely existing behind monster world-building machinery.

And just when you think it’s over — just when the truck finally turns off or disappears into the mirage — you pass the Black Thunder Coal Mine.

The Black Thunder Coal Mine is not a mine. It is a land-based black hole. It looks like Mordor except Mordor has better parking. Massive trucks crawl out of it like armored dinosaurs, each tire roughly the size of a strip mall. I’m convinced they only mine and burn the coal just to power the headlights of those trucks.

You don’t pass them, and don’t you dare challenge them. Just nod respectfully, duck down behind your steering wheel and hope they don’t notice you. And if they do notice you, remember my advice about the herd of bandit antelope.

By the time I reach Wright, I’ve experienced every season, three emotional breakdowns and at least one moment where I questioned whether I still exist or if I became part of the landscape somewhere around mile 43. I’m opting for the latter.

And then I do it all again next week.

Because Highway 450 isn’t just a road. It’s a test. A pilgrimage. A reminder that, in Wyoming, distance is measured not in miles — but in patience, weather, and how long you can follow a truck carrying half of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at least until you start screaming into the void.

And here’s the best part — the noble reason for this entire saga — it is that I’m not even doing it for myself. I’m picking up the weekly issues of the News Letter Journal and bringing them back to Newcastle. I’m doing it so people can have their newspapers, which means I risk blizzards, heat stroke and being absorbed into an oversized-load convoy so someone can skim headlines, circle grocery coupons and immediately complain that nothing interesting ever happens around here. Truly, I am not a hero — but if journalism ever needs a patron saint of unnecessary suffering, my truck and I are always available.