A comfortable, quiet night's sleep in the covered wagon and we're off again. I'm a bit sad to have heard the last of the Santa Fe trains. Also I'm aware of the fact that we are on the homeward stretch and we may never see our dear friends again. The wilderness calls to me too, particularly places labeled El Malpais - The Badlands - places where you can't graze cows and it's not easy, or profitable, to hunt the wild things. I'll miss the sad songs of the Mourning Doves and the Coyotes and the scolding of Prairie Dogs. The smell of Skunk in the woods, the sight of soaring Turkey Vultures. The Joshua Trees and the Cactus gardens, the rocks and the mountains.   
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
When the stars begin to fall.

There that's better! Nothing could be as bad as the stars falling. Even having to get on a plane. I've got my True-Love here beside me, the sun is shining, the Chocolate Mountains are before us.

Come a little closer to my breast
Let me tell you you're the one I really love the best
And you don't have to worry 'bout any of the rest
'cause everything is fine right now!

Also! We are going to visit Amos another Mudcat friend. I know he's a singer of the story-teller variety. I got one of his CDs from my Secret Santa last Christmas. His voice is great and his way of putting songs across suggests he is a kindred spirit - like the other singers we've spent time with. We'll be able to stay overnight with him, now that we are so close to our departure point.
    We drive through Hope which has a sign just beyond it's boundary that says,
                   "You are now beyond Hope!"
    At Salome - a tiny town named for a cartoonist's dancing frog - a tall gentleman cowboy opens the shop door for me with a flourish. Americans show such great style. Show-people all.
    The Chocolate Mountains are lovely from this angle but you don't get the full effect of melted chocolate that you see when you look at them from the West to East. Maybe you need the setting sun behind you as well, to have the shadows do their magic. We drive South alongside them down a quiet road. We turn West straight over the Algodones Dunes. We're pretty impressed by this band of yellow sand, but it's not as startling as the White Sands. Anyway it's become a playground for dune buggies so it lacks the peace of the more remote deserts.