Barstow Sunrise 5, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

Night swept around us, and we rushed through the night, as we left Bakersfield and the setting sun behind us. Drowsy kids in the car, we went over Tehachapi Summit and started across the Mojave. We stopped for the night in a motel in Barstow, the last stop for more than a hundred miles and the California-Arizona border.

I woke early before the kids. Peering out the window in the motel parking lot, it was dark, but I thought I saw the glimmer of a nice sunrise. I struggled into my clothes, trying not to wake anyone, and hoisted my camera kit and tripod on my back. It had been too dark, and I was too tired, when we pulled up the previous night for me to notice what was around us.

Walking out of the motel area, I crossed the road, and found myself in a median strip between the railroad tracks and a freeway exit (for Interstate 40). I set up my tripod.

Sunrise came on fast and furious and red. I photographed trains on the track in both directions:

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The landscape across the tracks also looked interesting (if somewhat sparse):

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Barstow was lighting up:

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I was startled by a flock of starlings coming out to greet the dawn and whizzing past me. I pulled my camera off the tripod, and grabbed a couple of shots of these birds gathered around a street light that was still on:

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The show was just about over. I packed up camera and tripod, re-crossed the street, and headed for the motel office where I chugged a cup of typically execrable coffee.

Back in the room, the kids were already bouncing off the walls. It was 6:30 AM and time to hit the end-of-December Mojave.