Long drive to Palmdale and Lancaster, mostly along a 55mph highway.  70 on the freeways is awesome.  55 seems like I’m crawling along.  Did, however, see another cool location to be used.  The massive wind farms.

Told Angelina to put on Reacher and she did.  If there’s one thing Lee Child does so well with his Reacher books it’s start them off brilliantly.  First serial killer POV.  Short.  Creepy.  Then Reacher in a bar and before I can tell Angelina to lower the temperature, he’s beaten up some bad guys and is taken by the FBI.

A perfect audio novel for the car (and a good kick-in-the-pants) to keep things interesting (to quote my favourite writer, “Never bore and never confuse.”

Lots of truck traffic and a good bit of low cloud cover or smog or something that obscured the mountains.  Still, a lovely day, blue sky above and all manner of hills and desert and amazingly cool rock formations.

Hey, rock formations can be cool.

Or at least different from what I’m used to seeing.

But about half way to my destination, I saw a sign.

The Devil’s Punchbowl.

Oh, that’s something I had to see, I decided, and peeled off the main road. Turned out to be quite a drive, up and up and around this bend and around that bend.  Not that Angelina minded, I think she liked taking curves that said 30, at 60.  I certainly did.

Sadly, though the punchbowl was pretty undevilish, in my opinion. I stopped, got out and had the pleasure of seeing another roadrunner race from underneath the scrubby brush.  Oh, I like those little guys!

Wandered around to see if I could see any bears or rattlesnakes (since there was a sign that said, beware of bears and rattlesnakes) but I didn’t see (or hear) either.  So, I got back into Angelina and sped off.

Next stop, the big city.  Lancaster.