I had arrived in this part of the Utah desert by following national forest and BLM dirt roads from Coshoctin Grove. That was five days ago.

I was now fifty-five miles away, as the desert hawk flies. And no one knew I was here.

I shielded my eyes from the sun and gazed at the vertical wall to my left. I saw the remains of a cliff dwelling. When I saw something reach out, I staggered back, tripped over a rock and landed on my butt on top of a cactus. I yelled involuntarily. I continued to stare and realized the thing I saw was an arm and a hand holding something.

The hand’s owner dropped the white object. I watched it smack into the detritus fifty feet away, bounce into the sky, roll down the slope, and end up in four pieces fifteen feet away. I shuddered when I realized I was looking at pieces of a human skull.

So begins Rhett Carter and Bandit’s adventure overlanding through the American West in his Wrangler Rubicon.