Dusk. Yesterday.

At this point, the heeler sisters and I have been on the road for roughly nine hours. Not including the hour visiting the rattlesnakes. The heelers' dinner time is less than a half-hour away, and they know it will be late.

They're not happy about that.

We've got 15 wing barrels down, two to go. Two hours of driving, too.

Actually, only I had two hours of driving to go. The heeler sisters had an hour and forty minutes yet to spend in the truck. I dropped them off at the house as we passed through town so they could have dinner, with me driving another ten minutes and back to gas up. Twenty-one gallons for the day, three hundred and forty-some miles.

Yeah, it was dry enough to cut across the desert. Saved 50-60 miles of highway at the expense of 80-some miles of non-stop dirt roads.

When I stopped to take that shot (among others), we still had 55-60 miles to go. Not even in my district at the time.

Was worried about gas for most of the last 150 miles. Mathematically, we should have been fine. If the first half the gas tank gets you 200 miles, then the second half should be good for 150, right?

But maybe not, if the last 50 miles includes climbing an entire mountain range. Maybe not if I stupidly leave the rig in 4WD for 40 miles of highway driving. Wondering why the guage is going down so fast...

Hence the driving at just 55 mph for much of the rest of the trip.

And speaking of climbing over the mountain range...

As we twisted our way through the narrow canyons, I was surprised to suddenly find a white pickup (from Colorado, if you care) in my headlights, parked broadside in the middle of one of the switchbacks. I pull up alongside and ask the passenger, a man who had been hanging his head out his window...

You lost?

"No."

"Just looking at the stars," the driver adds as explanation. "Sorry."

And I pass on, to the final barrel, where they then pass me. And then, a mile or so out of the mountains, where the sky is wide and dark, I pass them again. Parked alongside the road.

Just looking at the stars.