It was Monday, August 8, 2005 when 64-year-old Nita Mayo traveled over Sonora Pass. Last seen at the Strawberry General Store near Pinecrest, California, the nurse didn’t return to her job at Mt. Grant General Hospital, in Hawthorne, Nevada, the following day.

Alarmed, her co-workers contacted the Mineral County, Nevada, Sheriff’s Office and reported her uncharacteristic absence. Both Tuolumne and Mono County, California, Sheriff’s Offices were also notified.

Nita’s car would be seen by a Caltrans employee at Donnell Vista that Monday night and again Tuesday morning. But he didn’t think much about the car, as backpackers also use the point for overnight parking.

On Wednesday evening a Tuolumne County sheriff’s sergeant realized Nita’s 1997 Mercury Sable station wagon was still at the vista. Inside her locked car were souvenirs from the store, her purse, wallet, glasses and car keys. Only her camera and prescription sunglasses were missing.

Search dogs were brought in, but no scent of Nita was picked up. Further searches of the area also failed to locate any evidence of her.

In September 2005 Tuolumne County Sheriff’s investigators named Jewel Rice of Colorado Springs, Colorado as person of interest in Nita’s disappearance. She’s believed to have been in the Strawberry and Donnell Vista areas around the same time, asking for help after her vehicle broke down.

Jewel left Sonora without her car on August 12 and current whereabouts remain unknown.

Nita’s not the only person to be reported missing from Donnell Vista on California’s State Route 108. Forty-six-year-old Patricia Tolhurst vanished from the vista in 2014.

On April 20, Patricia mailed a letter to friends letting them know that she would be hiking in the area of Donnell Vista. She also sent two audiotapes to a friend telling him her life story.

Two days later, her white Toyota 4-Runner, with its sun-roof still open would be found abandoned with her keys, purse and identification inside. Search and rescue teams found no nearby clues leading to the mother of two.

Then sometime before October 3, 2016, 68-year-old Breck Phelps vanished along with his fishing gear and cellphone, from Donnell Vista. His car, a red 2007 Nissan Versa, was found a quarter-mile away near a trail leading to the Stanislaus River.

After four-days of searching by teams that included the California Rescue Dog Association, Monterey Bay Search Dogs and the National Guard, no sign of Breck, a corrections officer at the  Sierra Conservation Center, near Jamestown, California, was found.

Finally, 20-year-old Humboldt State University student and future forest ranger, Michael Madden went missing from his campsite at Sand Bar Flat, 25-miles south-east of Donnell Vista around August 10, 1996 with his dog, Matilda. Four days later, Matilda would wobble into camp, worn-out and severely dehydrated.

Two days later, friends went looking for Michael only to find a freshly build fire and Joseph Tine using Michael’s registered campsite. He was carrying an automatic pistol and asked the friends if they were looking for “Mikey.”

Over the next six-hours Tine is said to have repeatedly cocked this pistol as the group waited for Michael to return. Tine was given a polygraph nine months after Michael vanished, however the results have never been released and he’s never been charged.

Investigators say that they believe Michael met with foul play. Included in this theory is a possible run-in with Cary Stayner, who was convicted in 2002 of murders of the Carole Sund, her teenage daughter Juli Sund, also from Humboldt County, California and their teenage traveling companion Silvina Pelosso as well as Yosemite Institute naturalist Joie Armstrong.

If you have any information you can can call the Tuolumne County, California, Sheriff’s Office at 209-533-5815 or the Mineral County, Nevada, Sheriff’s Office at 775-945-2434.

It breaks my heart to see an elderly person eating alone in a restaurant. Then I realized it was a mirror.

Wanted: Someone to feed me Cheetos so my fingers don’t turn orange. No weirdos.

you are cute as hell
but please stop stepping on my – ow
those are my frigging nuts!

It’s called, “The Loneliest Highway in America.” U.S. Highway 50 runs from from Sacramento, California to Ocean City, Maryland, bisecting the state of Nevada, north from south.

Early morning, perhaps one or there about, and I was finally leaving Baker, Nevada, where I’d been attending a cowboy poetry gathering. I’d thought about spending the night, was even offered a bunk at a nearby ranch house, but I wanted to get home to my wife, so declining, I drove west towards Carson City, the state’s capital.

After stopping in Ely to refuel my truck and get the largest coffee the gas station had to offer, I hopped back on the highway and quickly zipped passed the turn-off to the small hamlet of Ruth. It would be some 70 miles before I’d see another town.

Listening to whatever radio station I could find on the dial, kept me awake along with my windows being open and the cup of coffee as I tooled across the open expanse of desert with far off mountainscapes surrounding me. Unfortunately, I had to slow down for a small group of cattle that had managed to escape their pasture.

Driving has always been and remains an enjoyment and I’ve never minded driving in the dark. As I progressed, I only encountered one vehicle heading the other way and none as I continued to roll west.

Recalling the evening of poetry, songs and stories I relaxed into my drive. But then I saw something standing in the highway jus’ outside my headlights and I pushed on my brakes to slow down.

It was a man – or what I believed to be a man – with an unusually large and perfectly round-shaped head. Soon my speed was about 35 miles an hour and as I came closer, he stepped into the eastbound travel lane, so that I could pass him.

“What in the hell?” I heard myself blurt out as I drove by, disturbed by his bulbous hairless, earless white-head, yellow clown-style hat, solid blue irisless eyes, black pointed nose, gray suit, tie and dress shoes.

Quickly, I glanced in my rear view mirror, moved to the side of the road and retrieved my revolver, all the while planning to give this asshole a piece of my mind. But no sooner had I stepped from my truck and looked back, he was gone.

Jus’ as quickly, I got back in my truck, fired it up and took off. Call me coward, but I really didn’t want to confront or be confronted by whatever I’d seen.

The event became a footnote within hours after getting home and telling my wife about what I’d witnessed. We laughed and forgot about it.

Later that same day, she had the television on and as I walked into the living room a commercial appeared. The sight caused a cold-sweat to flood over my entire body.

I shouted, “Holy shit! That’s the thing I saw driving home!”

“Don’t be silly,” she scoffed, “That’s Jack from ‘Jack in the Box.’”

While it’s true that I cannot recall Mother ever singing or cooing me to sleep, nor do I remember ever seeing a spinning mobile above my crib, I can still hear the man in our upstairs attic and how he came down every once in a while to wander our night time hallways. His hands like ice and breath smelling of rusting iron.

One morning, he woke up feeling different. He suddenly had large breasts and his penis was missing, in its place a gaping hole.

Fucking extraterrestrials!

It was the fragrant smell of roses and it only took a moment to find that my bed was covered in the crimson red petals. There was also a candle on my dresser, lighting the message, “I love you and want to do something that will take your breath away.”

I felt the air slip from my lungs…

She screamed at him because he was in jungle fatigues, loudly muttering, ‘I don’t want to remember all the faces of the people I’ve killed.’ He didn’t need to remember their faces; he woke every morning to their pale, rotting forms standing over his bed — each riddled with holes from the gunfire shot through them.

We headed to the outdoor shooting range 20 miles north of us. I noticed Bob was playing around with his prosthetic leg, a bonus from time spent in Afghanistan.

“What wrong with it?” I asked.

“I’m using my old one today and it’s uncomfortable,” he answered.

“Wanna go back and switch out?”

“Naw, it’ll be fine.”

With that, I let the subject drop because at times, Bob could be moody about his ‘fake leg.’ Within minutes we pulled into the gravel lot, got out and grabbed our shooting gear.

Our group included two Marines, two Army and one Air Force veteran. Making up the six-pack is a civilian named Harold, brother-in-law to one the Army vets and a real know-it-all.

Today, Bob, the other Army vet, and Harold were going to play cowboy and practice quick-draw methods. Harold assured everyone that he was a master of the art-form and was certain to come out on top regardless of Bob’s military background.

It didn’t take long for the two of them to square-off. Five out of six rounds, Harold out drew Bob in their private competition.

“See, told ya,” Harold bragged.

“Wanna go again?” Bob offered.

“And lose again?” Harold countered.

“What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment,” Bob smiled.

Something was up as Bob turned to look at me and gave a quick wink. For the life of me, I had no idea what he was up too.

Suddenly, the red light flicked to red. Both men fired and Bob screamed as a stream of blood pumped from his right foot.

Harold looked at the blood as it gushed in a geyserly fashion over and over. The sight overwhelmed him as he squealed in a high pitch, ran in place for a few steps and them collapsed on the ground, having fainted.

For his part Bob walked over to the fallen man and shook him awake. Once Harold had a handle on himself, Bob told him it was practical joke, that he had shot himself in his fake leg on purpose.

Harold was so pissed, he refused Bob’s apology, loading up his equipment and leaving the range. The Range-master was none to pleased either as he banned Bob from the facility for the remainder of the year.

“So, was it worth it?” I asked Bob on our drive home.

“Oh, hell yeah,” he chuckled.