Maybe a couple of miles / 3 km on the Natchez Trace Parkway at night; looking over a map, I’d guess it’d be on the stretch southeast of Waynesboro, TN. The other good candidate would be on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway north of New Orleans in the wee morning hours; I don’t really remember much about it, but it’s 24 miles long over a lake.
I hiked across the Grand Canyon once, from south to north. I finished quite late, and still had to drive to St. George, Utah, in the wee hours of the morning. The road north out of the park is about 30 miles, and I don’t remember seeing another car, just lots and lots of deer.
I went to the Everglades and drove all the way to the south end of the mainland. There’s a small marina, but between there and the park entrance was pretty deserted.
Did a solo cross-country flight from Stevens Point, in central Wisconsin, to Ashland, on the shore of Lake Michigan. There’s a large national forest in between.
Any of those times I may have been 10 miles or more from the nearest other person.
I did a sailing trip from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean with about 30 other people. Because of the prevailing winds, we sailed southeast to begin with, then turned southwest in the trade winds. We weren’t quite halfway to Africa, but we were close. I do remember one afternoon, 1,000 miles off the coast of Florida, we stopped for a couple hours and went swimming.
Cool topic.!
I’ve done some solo hikes, but none in DEEP wilderness. I’d guess 3 miles? maybe 5.
For a group - 4 of us backpack camped in Pukaskwa* National Park (Canada) - Could have been 10 miles or even more – it was late season and the camp areas are spread out.
Brian
* pronounced Puck-a-saw
I think those instances of distance from other humans where the distantee was in a moving vehicle are really a category of their own. You could be ten miles away from another soul on a remote U.S. highway at some point in time, but you would still be being propelled forward at a high speed and within a bunch of minutes of other people. The same with aircraft and triple the distance etc.
I have spent considerable time on foot in the sparsely populated regions of northernmost Europe, just below and well above the Arctic Circle, much of it alone. Even when really out there, I have probably never been more than 5km away from another human being.
In the hunting / fishing / hiking / cross-country skiing seasons there are relatively many people having the exact same “extreme solitude” experience you are, plus various professionals of many ilk doing remote field work, plus isolated houses in places you would have never guessed.
I used to solo backpack a lot when I was younger. Once I went to Canyonlands NP with the purpose of making it to the farthest reaches of the outback. 10 days. I don’t know far away I was from the nearest humans, but it was quite a ways.
Maybe a km or two walking in the hills - I’ve sometimes gone several hours without meeting or seeing another person, but it’s impossible to know.
Similarly a km or two kayaking around uninhabited islands off the Kerry coast, with a higher degree of certainty that there was nobody else around
Crossing the North Sea from Norway to Scotland in a sailboat with 2 other people - I am certain there were significant amounts of time when there was nobody else within 10 km
I once flew from the Isle of Man to Ireland with just my wife. About 20 km from land at the mid-point, and flying at 8500 feet (5 km vertically), but no idea what ships or boats were in the vicinity.
Nice bike but I was expecting a 2 wheel drive Rokon.
Rokon makes some pretty incredible machines, but with top speeds south of 40mph (~65k/hr), you pretty much have to trailer them to the edge of the cool places.
Once there, though, there’s basically nowhere they won’t take you.
In my next life…
Pretty much the same as the OP.
I do a lot of running, and hiking, and like to just explore away from any tracks. So, on a weekly basis I probably find myself around a km from the next person.
However, on the flip side, this is mostly in the UK. So I would bet that even times where I thought I had fully escaped civilization, it would be very unlikely that there is no-one more than 3 km away.
I’ve thought the same thing more than once. It’s a shame that solitude is so hard to find here in the UK, and wilderness non-existent. I’ve hiked solo a few times, but for most of them was very regularly passing people going the other way, and the more isolated ones were done with friends. I might have managed a mile from the nearest person on the least-busy solo hike?
For the accompanied-by-one-other-person exception, me and my husband drove through some empty parts of Patagonia on holiday one time. 200km drive with only a couple of houses on the way, and seeing very few other drivers. We were probably a few tens of km from the nearest other person at some point. Also saw some amazing scenery, would recommend.
As a surveyor in northeast Wyoming/southeast Montana, I’ve been in some fairly remote places all by my lonesome (generally worked solo), but I bet I could probably always get to a ranch house within ten miles, as the crow flies.
We walk all the time in our woods and in the woods of our adjacent neighbors. It is extremely unusual to run into any other hikers. For some reason our neighbors do not “use” their woods. (Not complaining, it’s like we own hundred of acres)
My BIL has a similar situation. His property is adjacent to a huge tract of State Gamelands. Other than deer season, he can walk out his door and hike for hours, never seeing a souls. He regularly takes his bloodhound out in the morning and comes back home in the evening.
You’re so lucky. England is very overcrowded and has no wilderness left, and being alone in what passes for nature is difficult. The majority of the land is in private ownership and trespassing not allowed, so in most places walkers are limited to a few footpaths, and due to population density these are pretty well travelled. The national parks are generally full of tourists, and also people live inside them.
The huge amount of space and genuine wilderness areas is what I envy most about America. You can just buy a big piece of land in the middle of nowhere, build a house and live in it.
That’s exactly what my gf did. Luckily she was able to come up with the money to swing it. Purchase a large tract of land. Build a house, build a barn, a two story shed, etc.
Nowadays I can’t imagine a young person being able to do this.
That’s so cool. There are several channels on YouTube that show people doing this kind of thing. Maybe money from viewers helps them afford it. It’s nice to know people do this in ‘real life’ and it isn’t just for social media.
Sadly even in America most people won’t get the chance, because they need to be near to jobs. But even normal housing is very different. We went to visit my father-in-law and his wife in Connecticut last summer, and their house has a large area of woodland behind/around it that they own. In the UK the average new house is built on 1/12th - 1/10th of an acre; developers really pack them in since it’s ridiculously hard to get planning permission.
Probably a few tens of miles at most, when I was driving or hiking out west. I should’ve had a buddy, as Chronos noted (I was an eagle scout), but it was a common thing for people to go hiking by themselves. I was lucky nothing ever happened to me.
I was probably further away from people when I was driving alone on the little roads and highways in the hinterlands of Utah and Nevada.