text: Final goodbyes • He wrote love notes to his family in his last days. 
   
   This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. 
   
   David Welch spent the last days of his life trapped down a dusty ravine in the Utah desert, scrawling love notes to the family he mysteriously left hundreds of miles away. 
   
   Welch's story begins the evening of Sept. 2, when without a word to anyone he climbed into his maroon Pontiac van and drove away from his home in Manhattan, Kan. Within hours, his family contacted the Riley County Police Department, but spokesman Matthew Droge said searches and a subsequent missing-person report never turned up anything. 
   
   For the next month and a half, there were no clues to Welch's whereabouts. 
   
   Then, on the morning of Oct. 18, a hitchhiker in Utah rounded a bend along a barren stretch of Interstate 70  about 47 miles outside of Green River and nearly 900 miles from Welch's home. It's a desolate area, parched beneath relentless summer sun. 
   
   "It's a pretty lonely stretch out there," Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Scott Robertson said of the region. ||||| Story highlights A man goes missing after he leaves his house on September 2 
   
   Nearly seven weeks later, he is found hundreds of miles away 
   
   He's found injured and trapped in a ravine; he used the time to write love letters to his family 
   
   His death leaves behind many questions 
   
   David Welch hopped into his maroon Pontiac Montana van last month and drove for hours. Without saying where he was going, he kept on driving, police say. 
   
   Nearly seven weeks later, a hitchhiker found him in a deep, isolated desert patch in Utah, hundreds of miles from his Kansas home. 
   
   Injured and trapped in his car, he'd spent his final days penning love letters to his wife of 32 years and four sons. 
   
   Authorities say his car plummeted into the ravine in early September after it veered off the road. 
   
   Welch, 54, sat in his mangled car for days, maybe weeks, police say. Nights became days, then weeks, then over a month. 
   
   And as his family searched for him, he was trapped in his car, scribbling his last words. 
   
   What's in the notes is private, authorities say, and they have been handed over to Welch's family. 
   
   His family's ordeal started September 2 when he left his home in Manhattan, Kansas. 
   
   A day later, relatives contacted the police to report that he had not returned home. 
   
   "At this time officers confirmed that there was no reason to believe Welch was currently in danger of harm or had known medical issues that may cause him to be in danger," the Riley County Police Department said. 
   
   It said it notified law enforcement agencies in areas where Welch may have gone. 
   
   Four days after he left home, a missing persons report was filed. Long stretches of time passed with no news of his whereabouts. 
   
   The retired Pepsi Co. representative was an avid outdoorsman who loved landscaping, scuba diving and snowskiing, according to his obituary posted on a funeral home's website 
   
   Forty-six days after he left home -- on October 18 -- a pedestrian walking along the edge of the desolate road saw an overturned car in a deep ravine. 
   
   It was about 850 miles from his home on a deserted section off Interstate 70. 
   
   Tire marks led straight off the road down to where his vehicle crashed, authorities said. 
   
   It didn't appear that he was braking or attempting a turn, just that he went straight off the road, said Cpl. Todd Johnson, a spokesman for the Utah Highway Patrol. 
   
   Authorities believe Welch fell asleep while driving, sending the car crossing into the ravine and rolling onto its passenger side, CNN affiliate KSNT reported. 
   
   Welch was trapped alive in the ravine for an unknown number of days. 
   
   He was found dead. What police don't know is how long he lived. 
   
   And with his passing, a lot of questions remain, like why was he so far away from home?
target: – A sad, strange tale out of Utah: A 54-year-old man who set off from Kansas on an unexplained road trip crashed his vehicle in remote Utah, and it wasn't until seven weeks later that a hiker spotted the wreck with David Welch's body inside, reports CNN. But there's also this detail: Welch survived for days and perhaps weeks while trapped in his van and used the time to write love letters to his wife and four sons, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune. It remains unclear why Welch took off without explanation on Sept. 2. His family notified authorities that very day that he was missing, but subsequent searches turned up nothing. His final notes aren't being made public. Police speculate that Welch fell asleep at the wheel, causing his vehicle to go off a curve and into a ravine below. He was about 900 miles away from home. "It’s a pretty lonely stretch out there," says a Utah Highway Patrolman.