image:stuckincustoms.com
The San Luis Valley in Colorado is a strange place. It has a running history of strange occurrences. UFOs, mirages, alien sounds, bizarre natural features and strange beauty are all here. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but something happened to me that was unreal. I was driving by myself, at night, alone and behind the wheel of the worst car I ever had – a 1982 Chevrolet Citation. No, I wasn’t drinking.
Having experienced numerous breakdowns in the Citation by this time, I ensured that I supplied and tanked up in Poncha Springs. I never entered the San Luis without water, beef jerky, a full tank of gas and an empty bladder. Especially in that unreliable Chevy. To get over Poncha Pass in the Citation meant I needed to push the pedal to the floor, grit my teeth, hold my breath and curse as the four cylinder pinged like a circus popcorn wagon at every incline. On a hill, the big four cylinder sounded like a Fisher-Price Corn Popper.
image: coloradoguy.com
As you crest over Poncha Pass, the San Luis Valley seems to have everything. Verdant mountains, clear streams and sweet green pine forests. Yet soon, you leave that classic Colorado scenery and find yourself sprinting across an empty flat basin, waist-deep in sagebrush. You then realize that this is not any valley, but the bottom of a huge pre-historic inland sea, that has become a dry high desert.
The San Luis is shaped like a warped satellite dish, tilting south towards Mexico. 14,000 foot high mountain walls cut it off from the rest of Colorado. The air is thin and cold, the sun is bright, there are no trees and the dry winds are strong. As you drive south from the Pass, the more immense and desolate the San Luis appears. It is not a place to be stranded in an infamous GM Deadly Sin, especially at night.
image: colorado.com
For millennia, powerful western winds scoured the old sea floor of sand, stones and pebbles, sweeping everything it could carry into 700 foot high sand dunes in front of the Sangre De Cristo mountains. These are the Great Sand Dunes. The nearest town is miles away where early settlers were able to find trees. I was in town to audit a few properties for a couple days and see the Dunes. It was off season and the middle of the week, so I saw no traffic as I finished up at the Alamosa Best Western and headed east towards the national park. The sun disappeared over the Divide and a full moon rose over the jagged snow-capped granite Crestones in a cloudless sky. There is only one long flat empty road to the Dunes. The only lights within dozens of miles came from the rectangular Citation headlamps. The Dunes and the mountains were magically ablaze in the moonlight. The night skies are unforgettable there, at that altitude and in that darkness you can see billions of stars.
It was too quiet, so I tried the radio. Citations had a vertically mounted monaural AM radio which looked and sounded like it was designed by Mattel. However because of the Valley’s altitude and shape – I was able to reach Mexico. I sped an hour towards the empty mountains and dunes listening to tinny Mariachi music. I began to understand how people could believe in the supernatural when surrounded by such magnificent strangeness. After experiencing enough of it I turn the car around.
As I was headed back to Alamosa, I heard an odd thump. It sounded like I hit a large tar strip, but the road was smooth. I heard another and once again couldn’t see a cause. I slowed down a bit then heard another. A quick series of thumps causing me to think I had a flat. I took a flashlight and walked around the car. No flat. Driving slower didn’t stop it. I shifted to the left lane to discover if it was a road imperfection. Nope. The thumping continued and occasionally I heard a quick succession of them. Confounded, I grabbed my flashlight again and did a thorough search under the Citation. Nothing. I hoped I could make it back to Alamosa.
image:stuckincustoms.com
The thumping continued. Sometimes I felt it through the steering. In wonderment I saw that the wind would blow loose valley debris and dust across the car. The sagebrush shook in the winds and in the moonlight, looked like waves of water rolling from west to east. I thought I saw things crossing in front of the Citation from the edge of the road immediately before I heard another thump. Was I hitting sagebrush? Tumbleweeds? Was it the wind buffeting against the Citation?
Then in utter shock I saw what was happening. I was hitting jackrabbits? No – I couldn’t really believe it. They weren’t sitting on the road. What were they doing? To my horror I saw that they were charging the car. They were waiting until they could run at my headlights from the sides of the road. I’d catch a flash as their eyes reflected light and then they would come at me and I’d hear the thump as we collided. They were jackrabbits and they kept running and charging the Citation. It took me a while to believe it was really happening.
image: wallmonkeys.com
I slowed the car to a near stop. Sure enough, the rabbits came at the car. I swerved in an attempt to avoid some of the attackers. Sometimes, I could see a half dozen rabbits racing towards the Citation from the edge of the road. I couldn’t get away. I had a long trip back to town, but I didn’t want to take several hours to do it. It was maddening. I sped up hoping I could out-run them. Instead, the thumping noises came faster and louder. It was crazy. I stopped to see if I was taking on damage. The tires were spotted with fur and blood. I could also see fur and blood hanging from underneath as well. The Citation was not damaged by the attacks, but the entire situation was both surreal and sickening. I stood in front of the Chevy and yelled. The noisiest car ever, needed a hill to make the engine sound like a gravel truck, and there were no hills! I hopped into the car and angrily pounded the horn. Then I thought I could drive without my headlights. In the end, this is what seemed to work. I drove for miles using only the moonlight and the Citation’s parking lights until I saw the main road.
Was it mating season? Were the rabbits attracted to the warmth of the road in the chilly night air? What was it about the headlights that caused such a mass reaction? If I had a bonfire would they had run through it? I’ve never figured out what happened, but we cannot rule out one possible cause – these Citations suck so bad they caused wildlife to commit mass suicide. The San Luis Valley is indeed a mystical place.
Iron Duke the BIG FOUR, climbing hills in KY trying to get into a sub-division outside of Cincinnati (but across the river on the KY side), my father actually forced the TH125 down into 2nd gear and still felt that it was inadequate. Can’t imagine climbing a real mountain with that sucker.
Rabbits, thumping? Who knows?
The truth is out there…
Interesting story. I hope these rabbits and on the Homeland Security Terror List. They seem like terrorists to me. You know, killer rabbits….
Speaking of killer rabbits….
Another great story from VanillaDude. This one has everything: beautiful scenery, a gutless car, and killer rabbits.
Actually had one myself, an 81 with the four speed stick. Bought it from my sister when 3 years old. Pretty reliable once I got it. My only real problem was when the clutch failed … Extremely roomy, decent gas mileage. A surprisingly decent highway cruiser. In Massachusetts I didn’t have major mountain passes to negotiate. Even found a Sony cassette deck to mount in the vertical slot.
Sounds like you got the one good one made…
A friends of mines parents had a white with a red interior 80 or 81 3 door that they kept as a pristine daily driver until the mid 90’s when it was either sold or traded for an SL2 Saturn. They were GM people, his dad traded up from an equally pristine Colonnade Cutlass to a first year FWD Coupe de Ville.
I remember the Citation had the AM “sideways” radio and his dad added a Realistic FM converter box under the dash.
That reminds me, when I was a kid in the fifties we drove to Nevada and in the desert country we saw a lot of dead rabbits on and beside the road. My father said that was normal, but we’ve never seen that in any of the trips there we’ve taken since the early 1970’s.
How many times did you replace the upper engine mount??? This ‘design’ defect put me off GM cars! They made/make so many engineering compromises on their cars with little attention paid to ‘long-term’ reliability. I love the ‘look’ of GM cars and hate their engineering.
Sounds like night driving in Tassie running over devils and Quolls all scavenge feeders along with the large variety of possum that litter the roads there, looks like nice scenery but for that trip or any other I;d drive something else.
Citations were never sold here though on a trip through the Hauraki plains I saw the only Citation in the metal Ive ever seen, parked in a field with 4sale sign a blue Citation like the pic at the top of the post with grass up to the windows. Some body went to a lot of expense to import one of those and obviously didnt like it or it broke down and there are no parts here for it.
Amazing article, man! Felt like I was there. I’d love to read some more travel/road trip stories on here because I’ve not yet driven anywhere super interesting.
It felt like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
That’s a great story alright. I can’t say I’ve ever had the local wildlife rise up against my vehicle, but I do know the feeling of being on a road with a mystical feel to it. Driving the Alaska Highway at night in the winter is downright spooky. Northern lights, no other vehicles for maybe 100 miles, temperatures cold enough to kill you and the only entertainment is dialing across the radio dial to see what you can pick up.
Sometimes stations from as far away as the US Midwest would come in clear as a bell for a little while, then fade out and you’d be searching again. I always made damn sure I had a full tank with 2 extra 5 gallon jerry cans, some food and 2 packs of smokes before I set out. We did total my then girlfriend’s car when she hit a moose once, but that wasn’t the moose’s fault. Thankfully a trucker headed back south picked us up.
It’s been many years since I’ve seen that part of the province, and today it’s probably busy enough that that feeling of being utterly alone is gone. Along with the simple pleasure of finding a station from thousands of miles away to keep you company for a little while. Today you just decide what you want on Sirius!
Ironically, just yesterday my wife asked me if I had seen the Citation parked at a nearby doctor’s office. What? I asked. Is it light blue? Yes. Sure enough, about a month ago I saw this light blue mint condition 4-dr. Citation parked at a doctor’s office near my house. An older gentleman was getting into it. I wanted to get pictures and talk to him about it but by the time I turned around to go back he was gone. It is such a rare sight to see a Citation in Rhode Island these days! I can’t tell you the last time I had seen one. Imagine – even my wife knew exactly what it was – and she said she hadn’t seen one of those cars in years too!
Great writeup BTW – the rabbit thing is very mysterious!
I had a jackrabbit run into my vehicle one time, but it was only one.
I believe it connected somewhere behind the back door.
Beautiful scenery, and a strange story. “Strange” in the way that a countless number of bunnies seemed to attack your vehicle, must have been the head lights.
I ran over pretty much anything with a fur or feathers on our pitch black and very narrow backroads. Manure happens….Worst that can happen here is a collision with a deer or a wild boar.
Your story reminds me of two songs recorded the same year as your ’82 Citation’s model year… “Mexican Radio” and “Twilight Zone”.
Possums rabbits and Kangaroos all go for lights, large roos can be a problem 6ft and 200lbs to hit but the rest just mashes on the graveltray under the bumper, medium roos are scary I had one hit dead centre then come out under the L/H rear wheel tipping my panelvan on to two wheels @ 60mph it came down again with a crash and no real damage but it was an oh shit moment.
Emus will do similar things too- they are truly the stupidest creatures in God’s creation….
Emus can be funny we had one runng paralell with our car through King lake reserve it was watching us and ran straight into a telegraph pole the only structure for miles around we were doing 70kmh at the time, the telegraph line is the only reason theres a track through that area of WA.
Had a kamikaze seagull hit my windscreen in a 40 limit when I was a bus driver.It made a huge bang but no damage.
Traveled that area many times on my way up and back from Walsenberg to Crested Butte. In a turqoise blue ’93 Festiva L no less, so I feel your pain. Once while driving north in a bit of traffic, a tumbleweed the size of my car slammed into the side of the Festiva, causing me to swerve to the oncoming lane, the 12″ wheels screaming in protest. Fortunately the drainage ditch saved me from completely rolling over; however, I was now stuck in a drainage ditch. I got out to survey the damage when about five cars pull over to check on me. The gentlemen were more than kindly to help pick up the 1500lb Festiva out of the ditch and back on the highway. And away I went.
A point of interest is about 30 miles south of Alameda theres an area of housing development square in the middle of nowhere. Streets and signs and power lines and more than a few foundations scar across the vast, empty prairie, but interestingly no houses. No trailers. No body. It was the result of a real-estate scam in the ’80s. The land was bought very very cheap, pictures were taken of the sweeping mountain vistas (unless you’re from here, you wouldn’t know theyre way way off in the distance) and sold to speculators, mostly East Coasters wanting to ‘own a piece of the Colorado Rockies’. Just enough development was done to the land to justify sale of the lots. Once the money was in, the developer disappeared the very next day. To this day, I believe that it remains in the very same state as it was left.
Interesting you mention the real estate scam. Around 1980 we had the “American Land Program”. Dutch people bought pieces of desert land in the US nearby a big city, it all had a fiscal background. The Dutchman behind it (“the Man with a Plan”) ended up in jail and the desert land is still desert land.
I’ve made that drive but in my trusty high mileage 95 Explorer. Fastest it’d go on that stretch up to Salida was 115. and much like an iron Duke Citation, it crawls up the grades screaming in second gear, or just barely making headway in 3rd. I have friends that live in Cotopaxi so I’m up that way fairly often.
That is the most boring stretch of road I’ve ever been on.
Then you’ve never been to Nebraska or Kansas or Illinois or Missouri or…
IMO.
I have always been told to avoid Jackrabbit starts when driving, and now I see why! 🙂
Cool story, have never had such a thing happen. A few near-misses with deer, but that was it.
And I am not sure there is a single car-sound that sets my teeth on edge more than a pinging engine. My 84 Olds 98 did this, forced me to run premium in it to keep it quiet. In those pre-internet days of gas around $125/gal, I was content to chalk it up to many years of old-lady driving and carbon buildup, and just buy the good gas.
Or get the timing set properly, maintenance I know is a dirty word in the US
Without a lot going on in that vast emptiness for any species, and kids being kids, what you experienced is little more than a game of Chicken. You saw the losers dead or dying on the pavement, but you didn’t notice the survivors on the ‘other side’ high-fiving each other, celebrating their ‘win’, did you?
In Arkansas, you could get a learners permit at age 14 but can only drive under adult supervision (18 or older) until your 16th birthday. So, a couple of days after I turned 16, I borrowed the keys to my folk’s new 1980 Rabbit and set out for some restrained hoonery backed up by two years of driving experience AND two years of solo Honda XL-75 street/trail dirtbike-top-end-45-mph-flat-out-redlining. We lived on a rural road that wound left and right and up and down over four ridges until you reached the highway, most of the time your sightlines were just barely adequate for the posted 35 mph speed limit. Having already inhaled about 4 years worth of C/D and Motorcycling, I was trucking along at about 50, heel and toeing, upshifting, downshifting, depending on the night and slowly brightening headlights in the windshield to warn me of any traffic heading my way. Suddenly a small motion leapt from the side of the road and headed towards my car, I had just enough time to glimpse a member of the species Leporidae before it impacted with a discreet ‘thump’ followed by a swift rearview of it’s body lit up in taillight red twisting and rolling to it’s final resting point.
Yes, I had just killed a rabbit _with_ a Rabbit. Irony, thy name is Alanis.
There were all manner of wildlife on that road. Numerous turtles that I always rescued and released safely at home, deer, herons, escaped livestock and fowlstock, frogs, toads, tarantulas and once a huge alligator snapper blocking the road. I stopped to let him cross the road safely. Naturally he headed for the shelter of my car and stayed there for a minute or two before completing his journey to the other side of the road. I got out and knelt down to see just what he was doing under there. His mossy hideously gnarled shell barely cleared the rocker panel of my Galaxie 500. No other cars during this whole episode, it was Sunday morning. I was praying he didn’t decide to bite my tires and he didn’t. He finally plopped into the marshy creek that was his territory, sliding like the turtles at the pet store.
The Blaupunkt in the Rabbit was terrific for pulling in far away stations, I could get Dallas and Shreveport AM stations during the day, San Francisco and Chicago and New Orleans were easy peasy at night. FM was much more limited in range, maybe 50 miles or so. Enough to pick up the rock stations in Little Rock.
I mourn for the variety of what I heard on AM radio on road trips back then that’s gone now. Dreamland, Clark Howard, Jim Bohannon, Casey Casem, all request music shows, interesting bluegrass and blues stations vanishing away after 20 minutes as the Earth’s ionosphere shifted and I drove through another county, scrub pine trees the only witnesses to my passage.
I like to think of the Citation as a hybridization of the ‘Carlo and the Rabbit with the worst aspects of each and copious amounts of torque steer and brake locking.
And now the participants of this little tortise and the hare tale:
Wonderful story, Vanilladude. I know that area well, having spent a lot of time in Colorado the past several years and taking many trips around the state (and surrounding). That road in and out of the dunes is indeed long and dead straight for miles and miles.
The Chevrolet Citation: the car that made the Chrysler K-Cars look like world-beating thoroughbreds!
Near my parent’s home in San Francisco is a one-block steep hill on which my 1978 Dodge Monaco (ex-cop car with a 440) could get over 65mph from a standing start at the bottom…that’s where I had to back off so I could stop at the top of the hill.
Their Chevrolet Citation could get to 14mph. This of course meant that the Citation wasn’t even 1/4 the car that the Dodge was…and I think that was giving it more credit than it deserved.
Didn’t jimmy carter get attacked by rabbits too???
It’s the lights that attract them. I did a run across the heartland long ago in my Chevy Celebrity Eurosport and while driving some of the backroads late at night in Kansas I was pelted with Prairie Dogs all night long. I really felt bad about it too and couldn’t turn off my lights because the moon wasn’t out and it would have been too dark to drive safely.
I am happy to say that at least my Celebrity didn’t suffer from the same ailments as the Citation. Running up through the Cascade Mountains and then the Rockies on my way East and then in reverse on my way back home was not an issue. I had the 2.8L V6 and it flew up the mountains without the slightest hesitation. I really love the 2.8L V6 and have since bought another Celebrity on the cheap and with a little love(maintenance) it just keeps on going(minus the prairie dog guts on the grill and tires).
What a great story ! .
I’m off to share this .
At least your Citation was drive able, my 1981 4 door was a great looking steaming pile that never made more than a 30 mile trip without violently overheating .
I’m off to share this gem .
-Nate
Well, perhaps offing themselves was the only way to quell the angst induced by pathetic rectangular sealed beam headlamps!
Or perhaps not. There might be a jackrabbit starts joke in here somewhere, but no luck so far.
I recall in the early mid-’80s a hair-raising indictment of the X-cars as deathtraps. The phrase “slip-fit sandwich of parts” featured heavily, I think because that phrase was used in a products-liability lawsuit in reference to the steering and/or suspension. Pretty sure it was Time or Newsweek or something like that, but zero luck finding it. I mention it just about every time an X-car comes up on CC, in hopes one day someone else will remember it.
Don’t you mean “hare” raising?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I am so funny to me.