The appearance of pavement produces mixed feelings: I'm 20% happy, 80% sad to see it.

After passing through the small settlement of Goffs, where I spent the morning chatting to a volunteer at the East Mojave Desert Museum, who kindly lets me download my photos there, I find myself on the Route 66, a highway which actually no longer exists, heading towards Needles.

Route 66.

Needles has the desolate air of a town whose time, if it ever existed at all, has long since passed. Things are patched up, cobbled together, paint flaking, car bodies slowly rousting. People are unsmiling, hard eyes and closed faces. A group of wannabe punk kids sitting on a pile of tyres at a service station direct me to the sole grocery store on the other side to town. They tell me it’s long way. I tell them I’ve come from Alaska so it’s probably not too far and their eyes widen. The boy with a dyed blonde Mohawk, sporting a large U-bolt in one ear, tells me he jumps trains and has travelled all over the country. A man inside the garage calls out to me as I ride off, “What do you do when you get a flat tyre?” “Fix it,” I reply. He clearly doesn’t know how to respond to this unexpected piece of information.

Shopping done I ride out of town as the sun slips behind the hills. I have no plan and only a hazy idea of what lies ahead. The highway has no shoulder and the Saturday night traffic is busy. The Mag light is a poor replacement for my head lamp and I ride in darkness through a semi-urban area – a mixture of casinos, seedy bars, liquor stores, dollar shops, interspersed with fields. My camping prospects are not looking good.

I see a quiet looking area on the other side of the highway and go to investigate. It is a golf course – I case it for camping potential as the Saturday night traffic passes on the highway. A few factors tip the balance against bedding down on the Willow Springs Golf Course: tomorrow, being Sunday, could see some enthusiastic early morning golfer and it occurs to me that perhaps I am coming just a little bit too itinerant.

I contemplate my options. I am tired and filthy and have spent the last eight nights camping alone in the desert. I turn and ride the five miles back down the highway to Needles and check into the Needles Inn – a salmon-pink edifice that attracted my attention when I first entered the town, the first of a series of seedy motels on the west side of Needles. The fact that the heyday of this establishment has long since passed is evident in prominent advertising of its status as a historic Route 66 motel. Finally, I get to step into my real life road movie.

My expectation are not at all high but I quickly warm to the Needles Inn. The management consists of a woman and George, her middle aged son, an eccentric with firm religious convictions. Sadly, the woman’s husband has just died but she seems in reasonable spirits. The entire extended family is in Needles for the funeral and currently housed in the hotel which partly explains why it is so busy. The atmosphere despite the sad occasion is festive. Children run about and play with noisy radio operated toy vehicles in the parking lot. Doors open and shut constantly. People stand about in small groups chatting with relatives they clearly haven’t seen in a long time.

Needles Inn.

God mobile - the van, it transpires belongs to the hotel manager.

Nice number plate.

The hotel manager and her son.

I retire to my room and have a long shower. Hot water is very welcome. I bring my bicycle inside with me and spread my belongings all over the floor. The bed is vast and there is wi-fi internet. What more could a girl ask for? I fall into bed at 2AM and in the morning I turn on my computer again. As check-out time slips by I go to the office and negotiate a second nights stay at a bargain basement biker’s rate. George is happy to oblige and kindly does my laundry for me while I gratefully spend the day trying to get this blog up to date.

Towards evening George knocks on the door of my room and asks if I will talk to some of the children about my trip. I agree and a group of three or four hyperactive youngsters troop into my room to view my bike and then sit fidgeting on my bed while they ask me questions about Australia.

A bed the size of a football field.

Packed and ready to leave the Needles Inn - of which I grew very fond during my two night sojourn there. A hyperactive child, a relative of the management, rushes by.

The desert, as always contains surprises.

My first thought was that this sign had to be a joke but, apparently, it is not. An endangered species of desert tortoise is a resident of the Mojave Desert.

I ride to Kelso where, disappointingly, there is absolutely no food of any kind to be had – I’d fled Baker so quickly I neglected to restock my food pannier, which is on the bare side. One of the rangers at the information office gives me a couple of granola bars along with maps of the area and another man also takes pity on me and gives me a slice of cold pizza and an apple. Slightly fortified I go to strike out into the desert again only to discover that I have lost one of my four litre water bags somewhere en route.

Eventually, a little flustered, I set off to a campsite 35 miles away climbing high enough to enter Joshua tree forest again.

I love these trees!

Amazing!

This roadside plant caught my attention, too. Gold stars on a silver bush - beautiful.

I get caught out after dark before I reach my destination. This time there is no moon to help me and I discover that I’ve have also lost my brand new head-lamp. I ride five miles in utter darkness along a corrugated sandy track. As I skid and slide into unseen pits of deep gravel, I curse and swear. Five miles can seem a very long way. At one point I have the urge to cry and I even stop, not far from the unseen campground, to call for help but there is nobody there. I finally stumble my way into the pitch black campground and put up my tent automatically in the dark and then cook up a meal by the light of a cigarette lighter.

Another desert sunset. A mile or so down the road, I discover that my new head lamp is missing, possibly it fell unnoticed out of my handle-bar bag during this sunset photo stop.

In the morning, I return to the turn-off to the campsite where I stopped at sunset to take photos and I hope to find the missing head-lamp. As I am riding, my frayed gear cable gives way. I push on to the junction where I am disappointed by the absence of my light and address myself to the gear cable dilemma. I unpack my tools and spares by the side of the road.

Two cars pass without a glance as I work on my bike but a group of motor-cyclists stop. They offer me beer and cold pizza and hold my bike while I make adjustments. One of the men offers to ride all the way back to the main road to look for my head-lamp. He returns after an unsuccessful search but gives me small Mag light he has in his bag as a substitute.

These guys were gallant enough to stop to offer help when they saw me working on my bike. Two cars had already passed without a glance; I think that's very bad manners out in the desert.

With my bike back in order I continue through the desert. The Mojave Desert has much more diverse vegetation than Death Valley. As the elevation drops somewhat I discover more species of cactii exist than I ever could have imagined. I can camp where-ever I please here but pushing my bike off the road requires some care as I discovered to my cost after an incident which required me to get out my tool kit to find my needle-nosed pliers to extract two thorns deeply embedded in my foot following a moment of careless contact.

Don't mess with these plants - those spines are savage.

More spikiness...

... and yet more.

But these are my favourites.

Monumental!

I am fascinated by the internal structure of these plants.

I’m so glad I chose to struggle across the rough dirt tracks to experience the vast emptiness of the desert away from the highway and traffic. Soft sand clutching at my wheels, washboard corrugations rattling my bones – it’s all a gift and I am very reluctant to leave. It is rare to find a wild place where you can sit a whole day and not see a trace of human presence, where so few people come there is no litter at all.

The first night I was here in the valley I stood far from my tent in the middle of the silent desert and turned a complete circle. Not a single human light to be seen and a silence that made me wonder what are all the sounds that I usually hear – running water, birds, insects, the wind in trees – there is none of that here. Even when the wind rose during the night, the only sound I could hear was the flapping of the tent.

The junction gravel road on the left, tarmac to the right. Which would you have choosen?

At the end of the sandy road, where I rejoin Highway 127, I rest for a few minutes. I am surprised by the mysterious appearance of a flock of six birds that settle in the middle of the road. They are stately and tall, long legged, white with black wings. They look like wading birds, oyster catchers with long beaks. Their cries are reedy and thin. They stand in the middle of the tarmac strip running through the desert and stare about them before stalking gracefully up the hill. I stand and they are startled, flying off but they circle the sky before returning to the same spot, sentinels of the intersection, perhaps? They are distinctly elegant birds and they look like waders – incongruous in the desert, testament to its hidden waters.

Regretfully, I take off towards Baker on the smooth tarmac surface of Highway 127.

I had toyed with the idea of passing through Los Vegas but when I arrive in Baker, a strip town of maybe one hundred and thirty people, it is enough of shock to the system after a week in the desert. Who knows Baker’s reason for being, it consists of half a dozen stores, a few gas stations, a restaurant called the Mad Greek with the sadly exaggerated claim of selling the world’s best gyros.

The Mad Greeks in Baker. Bright lights after a week in the desert.

Sadly, not the world's best gyros.

A constant flow of cars traverses the highway and people stop for an ice-cream and a cold drink.  Everybody in the place looks like they are on tranquillizers – disinterested, vacant, slow. It is hard to attract anyone’s attention for long enough to finish a sentence. Wanted posters on the window of the store sit alongside a list of rules and regulations for the use of the local recreational area in the dunes which suggest discharging firearms and explosives are inappropriate behaviour. The people emerging from the passing cars are the kind of people I have only ever seen on TV before; a blonde women with gigantic silicone implants in ridiculously high heels totters past, a snappily dressed African-American with a huge diamond encrusted pendant proclaiming his name – Ray – peruses my bicycle.

It is almost nightfall and Will’s Fargo is a roadside motel that looks picturesque enough for me to enquire if they would give me a special deal for the night. White and blue with a swimming pool advertised – I could imagine myself in a road movie. The man lounging in reception staring vacantly at the TV is clearly unimpressed by my proposal and so my hopes are dashed.

I retreat to the desert, to an area which I hope is not the local recreation area where people are probably discharging firearms and explosives, and set up my tent. Cars stream away on the interstate towards Vegas through the night. I watch from afar the moving lights sucked relentlessly toward the brooding red glow in the night sky to the east.

I retreat to the desert to comtemplate the sky.

Car lights on the interstate - a constant stream rushing towards Vegas.

Tricky ground.

Saratoga Spring sits in a small basin surrounded by a curve of bare hills, black, brown and gray – looking almost like slag heaps, mining tailings, piles of gravel – the barest traces of life clinging to them. These forbidding hills tenderly encircle a bowl of water, a clear spring bubbles up among tall green reeds swaying in the breeze. A flotilla of water fowl drift to and fro – some moorhens, a tern, perhaps, a heron – I don’t know my birds; the one I believe to be a tern has long narrow wings and a sharp ocean cry. On the dunes surrounding the pools and marsh the sand is traced by interlocking animal tracks, coyotes and smaller beasts.

I am entranced and although it is early in the day I know I will spend the night here.

I lie all day on the sand dunes and watch the light change on the water and hills. I still don’t know the names of any of the colours here – yellow, I guess, and green but what a yellow, tinged with brown, fawn, ochre and the green is halfway to silver, full of grey. The blue reflecting sky is tainted by muddy pool bottom.

Marshland...

... and waterbirds.

Water in desert - pure magic.

The colours of the desert are most vibrant, richest in the brief moments of dusk and dawn, those few short minutes as the sun catches on the horizon. Shadows five form to the serried ranks of mountains tinged orange and pink. When the sun pulls free and launches itself into the sky everything suddently fades.

Green, gray, silver, fawn. Desert colours that I can't name.

Fragile and delicate - why do people call the desert harsh?

The sound of the reeds, the melodic sound of water magically rising from the ground, the splash of the moor hens frenzied paddling when startled, a hollow boom of a frog, the cries of the birds – all these sounds have been absent in my long ride across the valley. The silence has been an awesome presence.

The sun slips behind the hills and bats flutter erratically in the gloaming. In the night I hear two sounds – an unknown bird with a two tone cry and the sing song yapping of coyotes.

The mountain range to the east of Eureka Dunes - like a chocolate layer cake.

Same mountains, different light. I have to cross this mountain range to reach Death Valley proper.

Cycling over the mountain range I pass a number of abandoned mines. You have to hope that people found what they were looking for out here.

More remnants of gold frenzy.

At the top of the pass the road stretches out into the valley below.

Crankshaft Crossing - a junction in the road. Mike told me there was a fresh water spring near here where I planning to camp but the road there was so bad that I couldn't even push my bike on it. I don't often give up but this one defeated me - especially as I wasn't 100% sure that there would be potable water there even if I managed to arrive at the springs.

Endless road heading south into Death Valley.

The variation of light and rock formations are constant.

The road surface is slow going and I hit tarmac on dusk and cycle into a campsite where I can replenish my water supplies after dark and set up camp. The following day I cycle towards Furnace Creek, the main tourist destination in Death Valley. I pause to investigate the salt bed lake.

Bad water - not the official bad water but I think this is what they are referring to.

While I am still standing by the side of the road and the group from Eureka Dunes pass me, in the opposite direction, in their convoy, beeping their horns enthusiastically. “Hello, Anna!” “Hello, Anna!” Greetings ring out over the desert and I wave.

After filling up both my four litre water bags at Furnace Creek I cycle onwards, choosing to take the West Side Highway, a gravel track on the west side of the valley. The sun sets as I turn off the tarmac but as the moon is almost full I keep riding, by moonlight, in the soft thick air 200 feet below sea level.

Cycling by moonlight.

Dawn, camping in the desert.

When I tire I wheel my bike off the road in the immense glimmering darknes. The silence in the desert is so deep it is a palpable presence.

After dinner I walk as far from tent as makes me feel comfortable that I will find it again and just stand there. The moonlight is bright enough to cast shadows, strong enough that the subtle graduations of colour in the mountain ranges ringing the valley are evident – colours so subtle they don’t have names. It is impossible to say gray or blue or brown, violet, silver, sage; none of it describes the colours I see in the not quite dark.

More deep gravel - slow going.

The vegetation changes constantly but I am ignorant of most of it - I don't know if this tree will spring back into life in the presence of water or not.

There is plenty of life in any desert. This little fellow reminds me of an Australian lizard.

The day passes. I wake to the sun rising over the mountain range, light spilling over the lip of the hills. This is no lingering dawn, the day comes fast and hard. The rocky ranges and low brush are bright and rich in the rosy red light of dawn but the colour is soon gone, leeched into the hot dry air.

Once the sun is free of the circling hills the sky is a solid blue, cloudless. The mountains in sharp contrast, sun bleached rock and harsh dark shadows, jumping in and out of relief like an optical puzzle.

I ride all morning, covering thirty miles along a dusty sandy track. One car passed full of old people and then, incongruously, a wagon train full of overweight sweaty people. Nobody seemed to be having a good time. They replied to my greetings reluctantly and pretended not to hear, or understand, when I asked if they had any water to spare.

The sun is hot and the road slow. The desert leaves me speechless. I would have to spend a long time here to learn the language with which to speak of it.

Eventually the moon rises and it is time to rest.

Moon rise.

More moon.

He pauses suddenly and then, although no-one else is speaking, exclaims, “Stop it! We’re scaring Anna.”

I assure him that if nobody is actually coming at me with a knife then I am not scared.

He falls silent for a short time and then starts questioning one of the volunteers, whose day job is as a policeman – clearly a resilient man – about the use of force during arrests. As the subject of enquiry turns to the potentially fraught one of police brutality and a recent shooting of an unarmed young man on the subway in San Francisco by a transit officer, a volunteer calls the circle to order and hands out hymn sheets. The men sing religious songs and then the circle is opened for each person to speak in turn.

I listen to each man tell his tale. They are all tales of pain; of violence and abuse suffered as children, of lost loves and estranged families, of time spent in jail, of harsh lives lived on the streets. Some men speak with a more practiced ease, clearly programme veterans, while others are more halting, some are garrulous, others speak slowly and painfully – but they all speak of hardship and loss.

Most, however, also mention small acts of kindness – sometimes from total strangers, sometimes from old friends, sometimes from sources as unlikely as their ‘connections’ or parole officers – which were often pivotal moments in their lives.

The desert night is cold and the evening passes slowly. Eventually the time comes when it is my turn to speak and I find that, even here in the desert where everything is exposed, I cannot be as open as these men have been. I sit in silence for a few moments and I wonder what the story of my own life means.

It is all such old bones now but I, too, can tell stories of a violent abusive bullying step-father, a viciously misogynist alcoholic father, an indifferent inept absent mother. I can give an account of being a child in the care of feckless immature adults so self-obsessed and self-centred that the only clear message they can convey to the children in their care is that they are an unwanted and intolerable burden. These are all stories I could easily share in this context but I wonder if I have anything to say that these men don’t already know.

One young man, had sat slouched down in his chair, a bandana covering his face, until his turn came to speak. Then while he was narrating the story of his childhood, he paused and swallowed hard before announcing flatly, “I was molested when I was ten…,” looking darkly inward, as he continued, “…and it affects me still.” What could my own experiences possibly add to this boy’s knowledge of childhood pain and humiliation and its insidious and persistent influence?

And, later, all the self-inflicted woes – a life adrift in the treacherous waters of addiction, the overdoses and suicide attempts, nights spent in emergency wards, arrests, evictions, homelessness, poverty – all this, I don’t doubt, these men are already familiar with. I sit and wonder what it means to have left it behind and I discover that the narrative thread of my own life escapes me. I can’t see the connections. I can’t tell a coherent tale of the pathway between here and there.

In the end, I can only state the barest itinerary of my youth and then simply tell the circle of men that a time came when I had had enough wallowing in despair, when I was done with half-heartedly toying with death, when I realised that I wanted to live. I didn’t have any idea how but I knew, quite suddenly, that that was what I wanted – and that was the beginning of the real struggle. I can only tell them that it took me a long, long time to learn to live … and that I am learning still.

When everyone has said their piece and the circle is complete, the man with the beard, officiating, says that he would like the group to lay hands on me and pray. I draw the line, unequivocally, at any laying on of hands but I let them pray for me, if that is what they feel the need to do. I try not to judge their beliefs, even though I don’t share them and I am uncomfortable with such an inflexible, proselytising religion. I hope that they extend the same forbearance to people whose choices, behaviour and beliefs they don’t understand or agree with.

One thing is certain: I have no argument with anyone here that addiction is a spiritual affliction or question the power of love and kindness to alleviate it.

Most of the men pray, on my behalf, for travelling mercies and although I am not exactly sure what it means it sounds quite nice and potentially useful. When the circle breaks, everybody crowds eagerly around me to shake my hand and bid me goodnight before I walk into the darkness towards my own camp half a mile away.

Eureka dunes.

The man welcomes me into the camp and it transpires that the excursion is part of a Christian drug recovery programme. Mike is one of the volunteers managing the programme. He has spent a lot of time in Death Valley and so I get out my detailed map and we discuss where might be the most interesting areas to explore. We continue to sit, chatting about topics ranging from small number bias in epidemiology to art and books, families and travel while Mike plies me with food and water. The participants of the programme are climbing the nearby mountains and dunes and after a while they start straggling back into camp, complaining loudly of heat and tiredness.

As the numbers in the camp grow things liven up. Dan, another of the volunteers is an astro-physicist, who flies satellites around the moon for a living, but he is still amused by launching toy rockets into the terrestrial atmosphere. A couple of potato bazookas are part of the camp paraphernalia and men, who quite possibly have had more dangerous weapons at their disposal in the course of their lives, start firing potatoes into the dunes.

Loading up.

Nice t-shirt: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

You might not believe that Dan flies satellites around the moon for his day job...

...given his excitement at launching toy rockets.

That's it!

Mike invites me to join them all for dinner and the campfire circle in the evening and I agree. When I tire of firing vegetable projectiles into the brush, I go to set up my own camp at a distance sufficient for the general chaos to be somewhat muted and go for a walk in the dunes.

Peace in the sand dunes.

Sand and wind is a beautiful combination.

On the dunes.

Tent city, far below.

The back route to Death Valley, which Brian and Kathleen have told me about, strikes out east from Big Pine towards the mountain range. Soon a road veers left – a narrow tarmac strip that immediately begins to climb and climb. There are more tarantulas on the road than cars, which for an arachnophobe like me is absolutely terrifying. In two hours only one car passes in either direction and a man with a long grey pony tail on a fast bike who comes up behind me.

“What are you running from?” he asks.

I contemplate his question seriously for a short while and then reply, “The world, at large, I guess.”

“You know where this road goes?” he queries incredulously.

“Yes, of course, I do. Death Valley!”

Climbing up the hill.

The cyclist goes on his way – his destination the top of the hill – disappearing soon on the curvy road. I am still climbing when he speeds back down on his racer.

Late in the afternoon, a convoy of four covered pickup trucks passes and then I have the road to myself. I climb steadily through rocky arid hills covered with low vegetation, twiggy bushes and spiny shrubs. As I start to top the pass Dr Suess trees suddenly appear – crazy shapes and spiky top-knots. I stop amazed to photograph these outlandish creatures. I realise how ignorant I am of this landscape. I have no idea what they are.

A tree that belongs in a Dr Suess book.

Crazy creature!

Joshua trees grow between 6500 and 7500 feet.

Once I’m over the pass a long windy road takes me down a steep descent in to a wide open flat valley bordered on all sides by bare ranges. The sun is sinking. The pavement ends. A second gravel track leads to the right and I turn onto it to find somewhere to camp for the night.

Over the pass and down into the valley - the road stretching ahead in the distance.

Pavement ends - a long rough road ahead.

Corrugations: there is a couple of hundred miles of this.

Downhill and a tail wind! I don’t really feel that I have much to complain about but every time I stop people ask me what on earth I am doing out on a bike on a day like today and I must admit by the time I get to Bishop I am feeling a little scatty.

I ride straight to the town’s only bike shop where I am welcomed by the owner – a friend of the Joe’s, the cyclist I met in Arcata, on the coast, who, very sweetly, has mobilised what seems like half of Bishop, his old hometown, on my behalf. A brief check of my email at a regional library en route has revealed that I have at least three separate offers of accommodation for the night and I am extremely grateful for them all as the weather reports are all full of hazardous wind advisory warnings and the temperature is predicted to drop well below zero celsius for the night.

Kathleen and Brian take me in, feed me and do my laundry for me, and when the weather still looks vile in morning insist I stay another night. Brian lends me his truck for the day so that I can run around Bishop doing various tasks and then get back out to their house which is seven miles out of town.

I leave June Lake mid-morning, intending to have a relaxed day covering the thirty odd miles to the springs. Finding the green church just south of Mammoth Airport is no problem and I stop after the turn off to stock up on drinking water at the county animal refuge. However, as I continue the tangle of gravel roads leading in every direction over the flat landscape confuses me.

The green church marks the turn off from Highway 395.

I am just so excited to be in the desert!

Typically, I am trying to find the most obscure and distant of the springs in the area and I cycle in circles for a while flagging down passing cars for advice. A surprising number of people are in exactly the same situation as I am but luckily there are enough locals to put me right and I eventually find my way down a bumpy sandy road winding its way down a shallow canyon to a steaming series of creeks and pools just as the shadows are starting to lengthen in the afternoon.

Several large pools with muddy algae-covered bottoms have been roughly dammed up to supply a more refined concreted tub. I test the waters and find that the tub is rather too luke-warm for my taste, whereas the siphon pools are several degrees warmer.

When I arrive the place is deserted but while I am checking out the source of the hot water, further up the canyon, a car arrives back at the baths. Since I am planning to spend the night here I assess the newcomers carefully and find they only barely pass my security criteria. The fact that one of them is a woman is the only factor that reassures me.

Investigating the source - a steaming stream.

Investigating the source - getting closer.

Hot water coming out of the ground.

The couple makes some overtures of friendship before stripping off their clothes and jumping in the tub. I am happier opting for one of the slimy muddy pools, both for the sake of privacy and for the warmer water. I sit on a flat rock as wads of green algae float to the surface and drift away but I am happy soaking by myself in the hot water. Eventually I decide I should address myself to setting up camp for the day and emerge from the pool. I manage to dry and dress myself just before the arrival of another vehicle.

This battered pick up truck and its the occupants in no way pass my not-very-stringent security assessment – these two guys look like they spend most of their time in a seedy bar and the rest of it driving around in the bush in decrepit vehicles, with a crate load of tinnies, hunting and causing general havoc. They stop to chat and I am polite and friendly but don’t encourage a lingering conversation. They soon go and settle in by the side of the tub with the others and I desperately hope that they aren’t all up for an all night party. It is Monday night – but then none of them appear to be gainfully employed.

I push my bike up the canyon to a place where people obviously have camped before – large groups of people, it seems. I disappear into the bushes and hope that the people at the springs will forget my existence. I sit watching until first the car disappears and then the two men get back into their pick up truck. The men alarm me considerably by heading in my direction but they continue past where I am sitting, still screened by brush, and drive up and over the hill on a bumpy gravel track and disappear. The only thing to do is to forget all about them – but I do keep my bear spray close to hand for the evening.

Looking down towards the springs from my camp site.

Evening sky over the springs.

Evening light on the grass - the desert is just so beautiful.

Sunset.

I set up my tent and cook dinner before returning to the pools. There is no such thing as too long spent soaking in a hot spring and so, as the last light disappears and the temperature falls, I get back into the pool and lie under the stars until I start to fall asleep. I fall into my sleeping bag, so relaxed I can barely move but during the night a wicked wind springs up and I wake to my tent flapping frantically, as the poles twist and flex, like a living creature trying to escape a snare. I try to sleep through the commotion but it’s hard to drop off again.

My tent is hidden up among the rocks on this hill. The landscape seems very Australian to me.

In the morning, the wind is still strong and bitterly cold. I cook breakfast and pack my belongings onto my bike wrapped in all my warmest clothes. I am about to set off down the road with ice-block hands and feet but the warm waters lure me back to them. I strip in the frigid air and submerge myself in the pool. I sit watching storm clouds gather over both mountain ranges. The occasional tiny flake of snow swirls around my head before melting on contact with the water.

Pretty skies at dawn, too.

This photo does nothing to convey the icy chill in the air.

It’s very comfortable where I am but the weather doesn’t look like it’s going to improve any time soon and it eventually occurs to me that I should get going before I get stuck out here.

This weather looks like it could turn pretty nasty.

The Glass Mountains are shrouded in cloud, too.