Water and good hiking shoes recommended. I looked everywhere. No where is it approved for motorcycle boots, long underwear (under motorcycle pants of course), and not so much as a drop of water. Same sign, different day. I’m still wearing the same clothes I started the trip in and the same boots and the same long underwear. The long underwear makes perfect sense, riding in the morning chill when it is 40 or 50 something out. Not such a great idea at 80 degrees in the middle of the day on a hot dusty trail but it is somewhat inconvenient to strip down in the middle of a parking lot. I’ve seen the Amboy crater on the map and always wondered about it. But it is so far out of the way and always on the path to nowhere, so I’ve never stopped by to check it out. It is this black cylindrical charcoal heap in the middle of a huge expanse of flatness marked by a dry lake and a distant perimeter of mountains.

From the rim of the crater, I think it should actually be called a caldera, since it is the remnants of a volcano that was active as recently as ten thousand years ago. There are a few heroic plants that grow out of the black rock. Not too far away is the town of Amboy, a vestigial town that once served as a stop on historic route 66 marked only by Roy’s diner who sells overpriced $5 a gallon gas and wears a gun on his hip as he serves me my cup of coffee.