Perhaps the most revolting food combination I've eaten on this trip has been Cheetos with roasted red pepper hummus. Hey, cut a girl some slack. The hummus had played admirable escort to a bagful of bulk celery stalks, but grocery shopping for one is always an awkward affair — variety and economy are ever at odds — and there was just too much hummus left over. On a solo road trip, old camping standbys like pita are out since they require two hands to eat: already I was piloting the lightweight little Matrix through some vicious Nevada winds at ninety miles per hour.

Daytime isn't too flattering to the Southwest: washed-out colors, straight-down shadows, a lazy haze that settles over the vast sere flats. Lacking definition, even the mile-high mountains look like misplaced molehills. It's not until late afternoon, when a cleansing breeze wipes clean for us the earliest stars and the boulders reflect long and pink across the ground, that the magic colors of the desert come out to play.

Five miles into Arizona, and we're headed straight toward the range I'd been tracking for the past hour. Suddenly a shadow looms before us, and after two days of endless flats I would have just as well accepted a tunnel or a cliff to come next, so yawning was the darkness. Instead the highway wound its way left, down a slight grade, and into the jaws of Hidden Valley Canyon. The next 30 miles were spent wending our way through an impossible cleft on deliciously new pavement. The slick yellow lane lines gleamed brighter as we got deeper into the canyon and the sun hid further behind the horizon. The canyon lasted exactly the length of twilight.