Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere?

I spent a Christmas by myself. That felt like being in the middle of nowhere.
I was 19, living in San Luis Obispo, Ca. I attended college there, my parents were in Illinois. It was too expensive to bring me home, and of course all of my friends went to their homes for the holidays. It was very lonely, just thinking about it now makes me want to go hug my hubby and kids.

In the desert in Israel, lying on the sand, looking up at the stars with zero light pollution. There were 30 other people, but they were all sleeping.

@Mtl_zack That sounds amazing!

Yeah, it was somewhere in the bush in Queensland, Australia some years ago. If my friend and I were near a town, I wouldn’t have known, as there was scrub brush as far as the eye could see. But we had the trusty little Honda Civic, so we lingered to look at the sunset and soon were on our way again.

Death Valley-

It is so quiet there it is eerie. No insects- not even ants. Rocks and dirt as far as the eye can see and the air is thick- seriously it feels thick and dead.

There is no life anywhere at all. You may as well be on Mars.

Then as I drove up out of the valley there were cactus in rare bloom. The contrast was amazing. I will never forget how that deep dead valley felt.

It is something that absolutely must be experienced.

My brother and I had a Twilight Zone moment while driving through West Virginia…..

We had passed through an unfamiliar town on the way to our grandparent’s house. This meant that on the way back, taking the same route, we got horrendously lost while looking for the town as a sort of landmark…we ended up off a weird exit/side road/SOMETHING into a pitch black seemingly deserted neighborhood….we had no idea where we were, there were no lights, not cars…nothing….and we didn’t know where the nearest something was

We finally made it back to the highway and found the road we were supposed to be on (we’d been driving lost for at LEAST an hour) there was NO town on the road and we made it back home in LESS time than it took us to get there…...we swear we’re never going through West Virginia again.

The closest I ever got to nowhere was the suburbs.

@hitomi – That’s what Burt Reynolds said!

Sounds like a nice place to get away from it all. Send me the coordinates, please.

Dude I live in the middle of no where

I spent three years in Iowa. It was nowhere, but probably not in the middle of it. It was more like the fringe of nowhere.

But there was one night in a motel somewhere outside Cincinnati. Now, that was truly nowhere. By daylight the next morning, it didn’t exist at all.

ditto Kiev749
and it sucks

no but I’d love to someday…for a long period of time…a bit like Jesus and his 40 days in the wilderness… it was 40 wasn’t it? I think there would be a lot of deep spirituality to gain from an experience like this… but time…. and responsibilities

@lynneblundell No, no you don’t. Its not enlightening, its not spiritual, its not fun. I go outside everymorning at 9am and sit for at least 30 min wondering why i am surrounded by fields for miles on every side. there is no upside. Jesus was traveling to die on the cross for all mankind. (but that’s a completely different rant) The only thing there is to do is drive the 4 wheeler around. thats it. i am 3 hours away from the city. it sucks.

Once upon a time I was supposed to go to this mini-conference held in Texel, Holland. Apparently Texel is a pretty touristic place in the summer, but it’s dead at winter, and this was December, -12C and dark. I took the ferry from Den Haag and realised that most people got into cars and taxis and disappeared, and I was stuck at this freezing bus stop, underdressed, with only one other person there, a teenage girl.
I knew what bus I had to take and asked her if she knew where this place I was going was. Apparently it was a rented farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Luckily it was near her aunt’s place, which was where she was headed, and told me I had to get off at the same stop.
We got off and walked some 500m to her aunt’s. I was already frozen by the time we got there, and they didn’t invite me in, but I kept asking directions and pretend I didn’t understand so that some heat from the house would radiate to the porch where I was standing. Eventually they’d had enough of me, and I was on my way to this shortcut they told me. Only it was pitch black, I could not see a thing, and I was so numb that I could not even feel whether I was walking on the path or not. My only clue was hearing my own footsteps and figuring out whether I was stepping on gravel or grass.
I kept walking for a mile or two, and still could not see a light anywhere. My only hope was that these strangers had given me the right directions and that by simply going straight I’d eventually see some light in the distance. Eventually I did (though not before I scared a few crows on a tree, who flew onto me and scared me back). My thought at the time was that, not only would I freeze to death, but they would not even find me before the summer came and some kid would just stumble onto me with his bike.
When I eventually reached the farmhouse in the pitch black night, I scared the living daylights out of some girl that was looking out the window and suddenly saw a yeti appearing out of nowhere and rapping on the glass.
I just realised I’m never gonna finish that book if I write whole pages like that here.

Peaked Island, we called it “the rock” it is the last island in the aleutian island chain. it is so far out, you can see the Russian coast, but not the Alaskan coast.

One year over Thanksgiving weekend when we were living outside of Dallas, we decided to go to Lubbock. After you hit west Texas, THAT’S the middle of nowhere. We drove for countless miles & didn’t see another car. If you had car trouble out there, you’d be screwed!

That’s where I met my (future) husband. Hitchhiking with a friend around England and we were trying to get out of this deadbeat town. He and his friends picked us up and the rest is history.

Somewhere between Odessa and Pecos, Texas is the middle of nowhere. “Ugly” doesn’t quite describe it. Maybe “armpit of Texas” is more accurate.

Don’t think I was ever in the ‘middle’ of nowhere, but pretty sure you could see it from where I was!

@suzyq2463 Yep, western Texas is desolate. I always heard Houston described as the armpit of Texas, haha.

@jbfletcherfan and @suzyq2463 — That’s what I was going to say! I’ve been there, on the way to and from a Hensley-Stegall family reunion in Levelland. (Or Littlefield. They look a lot alike except for the grain silos and water towers.) Anyway, we knew it was the middle of nowhere because when you hit “seek” on the car radio, it just keeps cycling through, never finding a station it can pick up. My husband wants to build an underground house there. (His Hermit License should arrive any day now. He wants to have it laminated and hang it on the gate.)

And I lived in the middle of nowhere for 3 1/2 years: I was stationed at Andersen AFB, Guam.

I’ve been in the middle of the desert in Dubai. I stood on a tall sand dune and all I could see for miles and miles was more sand in all directions. When the sun set it turned everything bright orange.

Backcountry, trail-less backpacking up the Toklat River in Denali Park, was definitely the closest I’ve ever been to the middle of nowhere! There was nobody else around for literally miles and miles. The closest other people were backpackers too, and they were dropped off the bus about 50 miles before we were. It didn’t occur to me how far away from civilization I was until we setup camp the first night. It kind of blew my mind actually.

Stranded in Buffalo, NY. Almost killed me.

Driving through Utah and Wyoming.

The France/Germany border in Alsace-Lorraine.

I live in a little town that is 250k from the next nearest town and that one is about 250 from the next and then the next one after that is about 1500k from that one. We have everything we need here and can be air lifted out in case of emergency, but it is a long way to go to get to the vet or the dentist or a Chinese restaurant! Within a 5 minute walk from my house I can be in dense bush where I might meet a kangaroo, water buff, dingo.
Actually once you get out of the capital cities, most of Australia is like this! I like it.

Yes after flying then driving for 2 days then dismounting and hiking for two more I realized WOW if something happens to me I am screwed. Everyhing worked out and I hiked right out 14 days later to my truck then flew home.

Marfa used to be the middle of nowhere as well as the armpit of Texas until they built an art museum and started filming Friday Night Lights there.

Our car broke down in Marfa some years ago so we went to the cafe/post office/hotel/drug store to wait for “George” to finish working on it. While there we met a man whose VW had broken down 5 days before. He was stuck because the part that “George” needed to fix it was coming in by bus from El Paso but the bus only came once a week. Unfortunately it had pulled out just before he pulled into town. We called the mechanic “George” because he spoke no English or recognizable Spanish and we couldn’t figure out his name. The guys at the local dealership said they just called him “George” so we did too.

Then there is also Tonopah, Arizona (not Tonopah, Nevada – that’s a bigger place) it consisted mostly of a single building, a cafe/post office/city hall/gas station/bath house. Actually, the bath house was a small hut next to the main building but very close to it, and you paid for your bath in the cafe/etc. Its current population is 1809 but I believe it was smaller back then. It certainly looked smaller.

“Tonopah is surrounded by mountains on the north, west and south, and opens to the east into the Hassayampa River. One of the outstanding features of this area is the thermal water, which led to the opening of hot-bath houses in the 1930s.” From
http://www.arizonaguide.com/wheretogo/City.aspx?ctid=539

And finally, wilderness camping in various spots, including the State of Sonora, Mexico, the desert in Arizona, near Dinosaur Provincial Park not too far from Drumheller, in various parts of Texas where the huge amount of noise made by armadillos stomping through the brush made your heart stop at night, and at Angel Falls, Venezuela. Those were all definitely in the middle of nowhere.

I rather like the middle of nowhere, for a while at least. But indoor plumbing has its attractions.

@TitsMcGhee Noooo, I don’t want to hear that! We’re going to be in Utah & Wyoming for vacation. :-(

I grew up in the middle of nowhere – Mojave Desert near the dry lakebed where the Space Shuttle used to land

@jbfletcherfan Utah and Wyoming are wonderful to drive through. Much better than northern Nevada between Reno and Salt Lake City. That drive is definitely the middle of nowhere!

@jonsblond Good. I’m looking forward to seeing that part of the country.

@jbfletcherfan: Yeah, it is pretty for sure :) Just don’t speed in Wyoming – I got a 150.00 speeding ticket!

@TitsMcGhee WHOA! Yeah, that would definately put a cloud on the vacation!

@jbfletcherfan: Ugh, the state patrol was such a dick too!

@TitsMcGhee Makes you feel real welcome in their state then, doesn’t it??!!

Exactly! Plus, there was NO ONE else on the STRAIGHT, FLAT ROAD I WAS ON. The speed limit was far too slow anyway :(

@TitsMcGhee Yeah, in a situation like that, it’s very tempting to put the petal to the metal.

I once tried to find a guy’s farm (from telephone directions) in the backwaters of Michigan the morning after a really heavy snow. If it had not been for one single set of tire tracks that I followed, I would not have know where the road was underneath the snow.

@jbfletcherfan: The ticket could’ve been waaaay worse… there were times when I was doing upwards of 30 mph over the speed limit, doing 100+ mph in total. Oops.

@TitsMcGhee LOL…that’s what you call living on the edge.

Basically, If you’ve been in the West part of America, Yeah, you’ve been in the middle of nowhere :).

the navajo reservation in arizona at night. man i ahd no map and me n my friends were lost. we asked for directions and some guy said “ok, you go straight down until you see a bush on your right, you take a left and keep going till u see a cow carcass. at that point turn right. then about half an hour that way you will see a broken down pik up truk and if u turn rite u will pass by a house with 4 cars and trash all over….
ect ect

and beleive it or not skin walkers are real. hell im catholic and i got freaked out. if it werent for my friend alfredo finding us while he was driving to mesa who knows whatd happen

@90s_kid – Wrong! I’m in the Western part of America, and I’m surrounded by hoards of people and civilization.

Yes, It’s taken me a while but I am now here.

uqh yes. I live in pennsylvania and i went on vacation with my 4 friends to the poconos.im not used to drivinq without my ffriend madison so ofcourse i had been following the directions.but ALL i saw were trees everywhere i looked and i was driving. And it was 11 oclock in the night. We drove up to a general store and askedd. He gave me directions and i was on my way. I got there in 3 minutes. =]

Our trek across the Beartooth plateau in Montana seemed quite desolate and nowhereville: rock, lichen, glacier, with occasional fragments of goat fur as the only sign of inhabitants.
I loved it in a special way; but, over time I steadily became more excited fo the trek to end, and rendezvous back in Red Lodge to eat real food, drink in excess, and be merry.
Next, I would have to say parts of Wyoming, E. Colorado and New Mexico seems like nowhereville, and take forever to get through. They still have some awesome landscapes.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. Here’s where it is.

Click the satellite view and you’ll see what I mean.

The middle of nowhere is also known as Soledad Ca.

It’s one of my favorite places to be, in fact. I like to think about it on bad days.

Right now, the actual physical location that bears the mental marker “Middle of Nowhere” is a patch of forest accessible via an overgrown footpath-through-the-woods, that splits off of a nigh-abandoned service road, which connects to a regularly-used service road, which connects to the county road.
It’s not really all that far removed from civilization; the nearest piece of civilization is probably only a few hours’ walk, and there’s an Army base not five miles away – you can hear them, sometimes. But it’s far enough that there’s no roar of traffic, and you can see the Milky Way, albeit faintly.

I live in Pennsylvania….most of the state is the the middle of nowhere

My wife and I LIVE in the middle of nowhere! Our little town has ONE stoplight and that one blinks! We love it here. : ))