Beginning with my next post, I’m about to embark on a month of March Madness, road trip style. It’s my version of a tournament to decide a champion, only the competitors will range from Grand Canyon to Vermont’s Highway 100 to “On the Road Again.” It should be a fun ride.

But for now, the photo above is a simple reminder that sometimes you want to get away from the madness. Sure, an RV allows you to point yourself toward the country’s quieter places. Get out of the cities and suburbs. Seek out the natural wonders. But occasionally, even a trip to Yosemite or Yellowstone can seem a bit crowded. You dream of having that wonder all to yourselves, but then you discover that a lot of smart folks had the same dream.

But there are places that seem virtually undiscovered. Smaller than burps. More forgotten than afterthoughts. Detours along a road that was already sparsely traveled. Stop there, and you feel like you have that small world all to yourselves.

That well describes my visit last summer to Nothing, Arizona, which I’ve mentioned before. But it actually describes my state of mind when I visited Nothing a previous time, in 2002, when four folks lived there.

By 2012, however, they were gone. They had packed up, left for who knows where, leaving only the detritus of their former existence and a fading billboard. So the place seemed even more like a forgotten outpost. The burp had become a hiccup. The afterthought had become a distant memory.

But sometimes finding Nothing is perfect. It’s exactly what you sought. And in those moments, it can seem like, well, everything. I’d call it a royal experience.