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A little more than a year ago (a week or so after all our lives turned upside down), I had a conversation with Road & Track executive editor Dan Pund about a trip we both took in 2012 to a very remote, and very exquisite, hotel on the border of Utah and Arizona. It’s called Amangiri, and the trip has become a thing of lore in the car-magazine world. We were there for only a night, between road tests of the 2013 Range Rover, but we both have vivid memories of the breakfast, a practically divine interpretation of huevos rancheros. It was almost—almost—beyond description.
Over the years, that single breakfast has come up in conversations in multiple cities with a variety of writers and editors. Dan and I decided that if we ever got the opportunity, we would work our way back to Amangiri, to that meal, and write about it. We would plan an off-roading journey that’s frivolous and demanding, on a lost track of road through some of America’s remotest territory—all in the pursuit of returning to the country’s finest breakfast, at a hotel that charges $4000 a night.
This article originally appeared in Volume 5 of Road & Track.
Getting lost means different things to different people. I asked the staff and our favorite writers to think about ideas that stretch the definition. It’s going off-road, sure, but what else?
It’s not new that our world has become “connected” and that it’s nearly impossible to escape it. What’s new is that we’re always on Zoom, Teams, etc. Technology has zeroed in on us. So unplugging from all of that is what this issue is really about: the lost art of getting lost. We shut down the ubiquitous GPS devices suction-cupped to our dashboards and embedded in our phones. We depart the asphalt in search of silence, dirt, dust, and the occasional coyote. We check the map, but perhaps don’t take it too seriously. We’re recovering things we once cherished, reconnecting with lost strands of ourselves.
ben rasmussenTo do that we got our hands on the new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 (the model’s first V-8 in four decades) and drove it to the middle of the prehistoric Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, ending up at Amangiri (“Escape to the Valley of the Gods”). For the very cool cover shoot, we trucked the all-new full-size Ford Bronco—in Area 51 blue—out to a pristine parcel of desert in southeastern California, where photographer Reuben Wu lit it against the sandstone hills with strobe-equipped drones (“The Road to Nowhere”).
Contributing editor Elana Scherr reported on the heroic efforts of the Moab, Utah, search-and-rescue crews (“The Searchers”), whose ethos is based on people getting lost in all the wrong ways.
In “The Dot and the Map,” Andrew Blum went deep on how society has technologically set itself up to never get lost, with a look at the fascinating history and future of GPS and how it’s merged with our lives.
All this and much more. I urge you to get lost in the stories of this issue. Want to check it all out? Sign up here to join The Track Club by Road & Track. More than just a magazine, we offer events (both live and virtual), curated drives, opportunities to connect with editors at automotive events around the world, and dozens of discounts, perks, and partner benefits.