I CAN'T SAY I'M SOME SORT OF INTERSTATE SUPERFAN-I'M not planning on showing up at HighwayCon cosplaying as a median anytime soon-but it's just facts that the stretch of I-70 between Denver and Cisco, Utah, is one of the best roads in the country. I first drove this road west over the Rockies back in 2016 on a somewhat aimless trip around Colorado. The interstate climbs up mountains, then winds along the edge of the Colorado River at the bottom of steep valleys. I was driving alone at 80 miles per hour, and the fact that I had no one to share the beauty with made me feel particularly lonely.
My friend Emmy and I drove the same road in the opposite direction in 2018, and now here we were doing it again on our way to Cisco, our friend Eileen s ghost town.
"Isn't this road crazy?" I said.
"Dude," said Emmy. "I know."
Everyone was building when we arrived. There were J., Eileen's girlfriend at the time, and Z., a friend from Milwaukee, sawing wood and swinging hammers. There was M., an older man contributing manual labor in exchange for using Eileen's WiFi to write a novel about his years working at Yellowstone, getting drunk and peeing into Old Faithful. There was Bart, Emmy's partner, who was helping Eileen build a camper on the back of an abandoned Ford pickup. And looking like the coolest person in the universe in paint-scuffed pants, a tee with a Sharpie hanging from the collar, and a bold pair of glasses was the reason for the season: Eileen.
This story is from the April - May 2023 edition of Esquire US.
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This story is from the April - May 2023 edition of Esquire US.
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