We walked down a grassy knoll to the lake.

‘The truck should be OK there,’ he said. ‘Place is deserted.’

Behind us the pick-up sat squat and red in the sun, a black tarp roped across the boxes and trunks in the bed. Hot and slick, the tarp shimmered like a dark liquid. The rest stop was a small gravel lot marked by a low wooden fence and three large aluminium trash cans chained to posts. Beyond it the access road, unlined and perfectly smooth, glittered in a slant of heat.