That Time an F-35 Stalked Me

I had a summer job working for the city I live in. It was spring 2020… I hadn’t yet received the call from my boss to resume my seasonal position. There was no guarantee that I would! I just had to wait and find out.

The summer of 2019 was my first season working for the city. It was great. I loved watering the city’s eighty flower baskets scattered around downtown. I got along great with my boss and my coworkers, and I hoped to be asked back the following summer.

But then coronavirus happened.

I heard rumors that they might not hang the city flowers during the 2020 summer season. Finances were solid the year before, but now the city funds were reduced because of the lack of tourism during the first months of the pandemic. I called the city office to get confirmation, but no one seemed to know exactly what might happen next.

Assuming that I had little hope to return to the job I had enjoyed so much the summer before, I said yes when my best friend asked me to come and pay her a long weekend visit in Springdale, Utah. Springdale is a tourist destination on the edge of beautiful Zion National Park.

My first visit to Zion!

This would be the longest vehicular journey that I had ever traveled by myself. I was excited to do this on my own! I knew the trek would be on lonely roads in the middle of nowhere, but I saw it as a personal challenge.

I said goodbye to my husband and teenage kids and was on my way.

To get there from where I live, I had to take “America’s Loneliest Highway”… Highway 50.

It was around 3pm when I found myself traveling on this infamous highway.

Public land to the right and left of me. Public land ahead of and behind me. No other vehicles on the road. I could see in all directions for miles and miles.

The stretch of road that I was on was between Fallon, NV and Austin, NV. I knew my friend was waiting for me at the end of this long journey, so I tried not to feel uncomfortable with the remote nature of my situation.

My discomfort was also due to the fact that I did not have any cellphone service in this secluded area.

Never had I found myself in such a circumstance. I am uptight by nature, so I was side-eyeing my current situation like crazy.

Fallon is a military base in Nevada. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when I began to see military aircraft in the skies above. Dark gray helicopters buzzed by, as did other military planes.

I singled out one particular plane that soared past me repeatedly. “This has nothing to do with me, despite being the only vehicle on the road. It’s just military training that I get to witness!”. I kept telling this to myself.

I watched this single plane zip past me, then return closer to ground level, then disappear behind a mountain peak. Reappearing, it would cross Highway 50 in front of me, lower than I’ve ever seen any plane that wasn’t getting ready to land.

Then, I could not see the plane anywhere. I looked right and left. Behind and in front.

Finally, I found it.

It was above Highway 50 ahead of me… facing me. I kept my eye on it, waiting for it to zoom past me.

It never did.

What was taking the plane so long to fly past me? Was it actually facing away from me? It didn’t look like it! It was clear that it was facing my car!

After a minute or two, I got close enough to realize something unthinkable. It wasn’t moving. The plane was frozen in mid-air. Directly above the lonely road I was driving on, with no one else in sight.

As I timidly drove my Subaru towards the military plane, I looked up in awe. My eyes weren’t deceiving me. It was, in fact, suspended in mid-air… directly above my lonely car!!

I stared up with my mouth hung open. I was too shocked to even think about getting my phone out to capture the moment with a picture.

A few seconds later, I had passed the plane that was hovering directly about Highway 50. I cleared my head and decided to pull over quickly and take another look. It only took five seconds for me to do so, but when I looked up at the area where the plane once hovered, it was nowhere to be seen.

Not only did a hovering aircraft right above me disappear into thin air, it did so with absolutely no sound. I never heard a peep. It flew off in silence… from a suspended position… mid-air!

I clutched my pearls in astonishment.

When I finally reached a town that allowed some cell service, my phone rang.

Who was calling me? My friend awaiting my arrival for our long weekend visit? My husband checking on me to see how the trip was going?

No. It was my boss from the city, asking if I’d be willing to work again for the upcoming summer season.

I calmly said yes… of course I would love to water the city flowers again this year. I remained professional, despite the surreal event I had just experienced. To mention to him what I had just witnessed would take a while from the start to the finish of my experience. So I kept it to myself, knowing that I would have a chance to tell my theatrical story to my best friend, and later to my family.

A few weeks later, I was downtown watering the flowers as if nothing had happened.

Oh, the wonders of this world.