Back Road Bob Cashes Out On Buck & Doe Road

 April 2, 2021

   This morning Kathy asked me once again where I wanted my ashes spread and, to be funny, I said, "I want my ashes spread at the half-way point on Buck & Doe Road." When she asked where the hell that was I confessed I had traveled that lonely, dirt road, only once. And then we both laughed at the random absurdity of it all, and she added this: "Well, laugh away Buster, because that's where I'm putting you," and I laughed, because, ultimately, what the hell do I care where my ashes are spread?

Al Bell on the south terminus of Buck & Doe Road

at Peach Springs, Arizona

   Besides, if someone wants to visit me out there they are in for a hell of a scenic drive! And the Hualapais might make a buck or two on flat tire repair. So, it's a win-win. Here's my original travelogue, posted four years ago today.

The Buck & Doe Road Less Traveled

 

  I don't know where I got this phobia, but I have an extreme aversion to returning from a trip, even to the grocery store, by the same route. Maybe it's because we did this every summer on our trips to the Iowa farm? One thousand-seven-hundred-miles up, and one-thousand-seven-hundred-miles back to Kingman, seeing the exact same scenery from the opposite direction. Although, to be honest, starting in about 1963, my father did take alternate routes, the most memorable, across the Navajo Reservation to Four Corners and on to Durango and then over Wolf's Creek Pass to Colorado Springs and on to Iowa. Now THAT was a trip to remember, and perhaps that's what lit the fuse on my backroad mania.

"Bob Boze Bell 

is backroads famous. He seldom takes main highways; he prefers instead the secondary, less-used routes. He believes in knowing the country and it's people, neither of which is present on freeways. If you are going to follow him, I'd suggest solid maintenance, strong horses, full tanks and new tires."

—Mort Mortensen