We decided to camp near The Hottub so we could get a good morning soak before skiing at Mammoth Mountain. Life is so tough.

The culinary wonders never ceased, and we figured out that tea made from plain old shredded ginger root is about the best tea possible. In the picture you can see our vegetarian refried bean can acting as our tea kettle. Apparently ginger tea is no secret, but it was new and miraculous to us. That and our gorgeous fire and the gorgeous desert night sky easily compensated for the fact that through the night was a procession of drunken boobs coming to use the hottub and cranking their stereos (you can always tell when it's an S.U.V. stereo) and hooting it up like characters from Budweiser ads.

We woke at 5am to get an outrageously early start, and the water for our morning ginger tea was frozen. Note the ice hulk in our tea kettle.

And our morning soak in The Hotub was absolutely spectacular. The half moon was at its high noon as the sun started to rise and its reflection danced on the black hot spring water whenever we moved. And there were stars everywhere, orange on a background of deep blue, and as the sun rose it was like someone slowly moving the slider in Photoshop decreasing the opacity of the stars and increasing the sun, and the snowy jagged mountains in the near horizon facing the sunrise started to reflect orange. And my hair froze but it didn't make me cold in the least. And the desert would dry me in 5 seconds flat whenever I left the tub. And shining my headlamp in the water I saw at the bottom something that looked a lot like a dead white mouse, and we played once-twice-three-shoot to determine who would remove it, I lost, and it turned out it was a tampon. Oh well, it just added to the mineral experience.