Real Encounters

*Don't ask for directions on lonely roads*

In the summer of 2013 my friends and I went out to the lake for the August long weekend. We heard of a party that night about a half hour away from where we were staying and decided to meet up with some other friends who were attending. Mostly everyone was drunk at this point, it was already 10 PM and since I had only a couple drinks through the day I decided to drive one of the vehicles. Since there was 8 or so of us we had to take two vehicles. We loaded up the cars with tents and booze since we planned on staying the night and off we went.

The drive started out pretty normal. We didn't exactly know where we were going so we relied on cellphone gps which didn't work well since we were in cabin country. The vehicle that I was driving left about 15 minutes before the other one because they were playing some frisbee game where you had to knock off a bottle on a post and I guess they had money on the game or something.

I have been going out to the lake for my entire life at this point but the fact that I had really crappy GPS connection, coupled with headlights that were very dim, made for a challenging experience. We knew we weren't far from the party but it was evident that we were kind of lost.

One thing about the area that we were in is that there are a lot of people around. There are stretches of road that at night you won't see another car ever but there are always plenty of cabins nearby. The population of this area between the winter and summer changes from roughly 5000 to 50,000. After a good amount of driving we see a car ahead with its hazards on. We decided to ask whoever was there for directions. Not a good idea. We pull up beside the car and I look over and see a guy who looked to be not much older than us but then again it was hard to tell. He appeared mid 20s with wide framed glasses and shoulder length hair under a mesh cap. He was just staring ahead looking into the distance.

"Hey buddy, you don't happen to know where Spruce Bend is do you? We're going to a party and got lost."

No response, the guy just kept looking ahead.

"You alright?" I asked

"Ya, ya just make your next left and it'll be a right after that."

"Thanks, much appreciated."

So we keep going and notice that this guy has turned his hazards off and is following a distance behind us. Bit strange but we didn't think much of it at the time. We make the left that he suggested onto a really rough and bumpy gravel road and took that for roughly 3 minutes. The road was really shitty but I could see the glow of headlights behind me. The first right was a dirt road unmarked that didn't appear to go very far.

We slowed down and debated turning down this road and looking back I'm glad we didn't. The guy was still following us and we decided to peel out of there. He followed us right on our tail the whole way back down that road. The road had no cabins. No identifying features and no turns until we got to the end. Some of the guys in the car wanted to pull over. There was 5 of us and 1 one of him and they figured we could take him but the guy seemed nuts and I wasn't about to let some lunatic with a gun shoot us all. I kept driving, hung a right at the end of the road which led out to the highway. He stopped following us at that point and as we took off the image of his car sitting at the end of that road. Not moving as we speed off into the distance is embedded in my mind.

We called the other car and they seemed to have better GPS so they told us where to go. The party was great but I think that night still sits with us. I sure don't want to come across a car with its hazards on, on a lonely unmarked road in the heat of the summer again.