The view from the top of Owens Valley, looking south. After a long drive through Nevada, this is where my spirits pick up: less than an hour left to drive, an increasingly familiar road, and late afternoon sun dressing up the landscape for my camera.

The foreground is rocky rubble, covered with sagebrush. A dry creekbed runs downward at the feet of sloping, rounded foothills on the right. Mountains in the distance, pale with haze, slope the same way, from right to left, west to east.