Later in the day we were again running along the rail-lines. At one point I noticed in my rear-view that a train was trying to sneak up on the She Beast ;)

As the day progressed we made our way north to, and through, the Slabs, . . . found a place to harvest some fuel, got pulled by the Border Patrol at their check point, and finely made it to the canyon that directed us to the southern side of J-Tree's park.

Getting pulled at the check point was interesting. an officer headed toward my rig telling me that I needed to "shut it down". I replied that I could not, it has an oil cooled turbo and shutting it down without letting it idle for 4, or 5 mins can cause damage. He then decided that I needed to exit the rig.

His partner, a shepherd, was expecting to be able to sniff about in the cab but was not happy with it still running (loudly). There was also the issue of how to get him up there. The little Draggin' has no step to access the cab (it was damaged when someone ran it over something that was too high and I've been using a support bracket as a step)and I could see the officer contemplating wrestling his buddy up and into the cab like an over-sized sack of potatoes, I too was having those visions (and trying not to laugh). He decided that it was not what he wanted to do today and instead just walked him around the outside a bit.

After talking with us for a while, mostly about the mechs, and a quick glance inside the back of the She Beast, we were on our way.

The whole place is crevice upon crevice of eroded hard clay mud.