Smog, glorious smog

Anyone who's driven to California from Arizona will, I think, recognize this view: it's the moment when the smog cloud of Indio announces that you've left behind the near-emptiness of the desert, and re-entered civilization.



Speaking of the desert, here's a shot from about an hour earlier, showing one of the Mordor-ish mountains that lines I-10 in southeastern California as it passes through the Mojave Desert:



They're seriously a bit spooky. As Eomer says in the Return of the King, "Those mountains are evil."