Hanksville is a crossroads, and nothing more is required of it. A few dozen buildings, a gas station or two, a motel, a diner, and a long view of pale hills in south-central Utah, where the highways meet at the edge of some of the emptiest country in the lower forty-eight. The land is red, grey and pink, with eroded badlands, buttes and domes, and the sky is huge. Summer days are fiercely hot, nights are cool, and the silence is part of the attraction.
Hanksville has a long association with outlaws. The nearby Robbers Roost, a maze of canyons north of the town, was a hideout for Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch in the 1890s, and the rugged terrain made pursuit very difficult. To the south, the Henry Mountains rise to over eleven thousand feet, the last mountain range in the lower forty-eight to be mapped by the US government, and today the home of one of the continent's few free-roaming herds of bison. Capitol Reef National Park is to the west, with its multi-coloured cliffs, and the strange Goblin Valley lies to the north-west.
The Bicentennial Highway, Utah 95, heads south from here across the dry plateau and through the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau, passing Glen Canyon and the long fingers of Lake Powell where the road crosses the Colorado River, before arriving at Natural Bridges National Monument. Along the way it passes through scrub and sandstone, with long climbs, open views and almost no traffic. The road is paved and fairly fast, with big curves, but it is remote, and a breakdown can leave you waiting for hours.
Take the fuel question seriously. Hanksville has fuel, but the next supplies are a long way off, so fill the tank, and carry water. Phone coverage is patchy to absent along the route. Spring and autumn are the best seasons, with warm days and cool nights, and the late afternoon light turns the rock to fire. Summer heat can top forty degrees Celsius, and flash floods are a danger in the washes during thunderstorms. At night, the stars are so thick that they seem to hang just above the road.