Betsy Shepard

I get anxiety coming to places like this because it reminds me of the town that I grew up in.

I feel the oppressive weight of boredom.

Oh, really?

I moved to LA several years ago from South Louisiana.

I'd never been to Antelope Valley before, but it was immediately familiar to me.

Because if you were to replace desert with swamp, this region would look a lot like the small town I'm from.

It's rural and kind of rundown.

There's more landscape than real estate.

Lots of pickup trucks.

And town life seems like a thing of the past.

We got...

An abandoned motel?

What's this?

Oh, like an abandoned old restaurant and rec hall.

And people getting gas to presumably be all their way.

But the closer we get to the Devil's Punchbowl, where Ajay was last spotted, an otherworldly landscape appears, full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.

I feel like I'm in an old Western movie, you know, like where he's got this like wide, epic landscape shots.

Endless horizons, totally.

Endless horizons.

I can see why Ajay likes to come out here.