Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Sarah Dallof reportingA Pennsylvania couple has a caution for anybody traveling in remote parts of Utah: Check, double check, and triple check your route.
Sue and Ray Beard are like any newlyweds, they want to see the world. So, five months after their wedding, they headed west to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. They rented a car with a Global Positioning System (GPS), and they followed it to a "T" in the road. They say that was one of their mistakes.
The GPS pointed them onto a bumpy dirt road. Hours later they saw a sign that said the road was closed due to weather. They tried another route and got stuck, then the car stopped.
Sue said, "My first thought when we broke down was, ‘We're going to die here.'"
There was no cell phone service, they hadn't checked in with the Bureau of Land Management, and they hadn't left a copy of their itinerary with family. As Ray says, "Our hopes of being rescued there were slim because we saw nobody."
They wrote letters to their loved ones, talked, and tried to fight off the bugs. Four days later, out of water and down to the last of their food, they decided to try to find help. They walked for five hours before stopping to rest.
"Ray was asleep, and all the sudden he opened his eyes and said, "There was a motorcycle, I just heard a motorcycle,'" Sue said.
It turned out to be three motorcycles, whose riders called for help.
The couple says their mission now is to have signs placed near the monument, warning travelers of the need for 4-wheel drive; they didn't see a single one. And, they say they've learned to better trust their instincts.
"A flag should go up when you hit a dirt road. It does for us now," Ray said.
The Beards have recovered from their ordeal, both physically and emotionally. They're out traveling again but staying on the more civilized east coast for now.
E-mail: sdallof@ksl.com
