So, where was I?

We'd spent the morning crossing the Boggy Meadows flats. Well named, in normal or wet years. Under normal conditions you would have to be careful where you drove, picking your way along the pipeline road, making sure you didn't drive into a bog hole.

Under wet conditions, you don't go here.

At all.

But today we were raising dust everywhere. No moist ground at all. Dust several inches thick on the two tracks that the well-drilling trucks had been using.

Wells for water, not gas.

The gas pipeline that the road follows is exposed above the sand in many places now, thanks to the wind erosion, even having to be supported by sandbags in a couple places. Makes you a little leary, since in a few places you are driving straddled over that exposed natural gas line.

No where near the normal number of antelope. Yes, it was overcast most of the morning, which makes antelope hard to spot, but I used the binocs regularly, and still found only 72 antelope. On a route that had 126 last year, and 303 the year before.

It's been dry, you see.

And even after the clouds melted away it was still hazy. From the smoke from fires in our neighbor to the south, according to the newspaper.

So after completing most of the route, and having looped almost all the way back to the highway, we are stopped at a windmill. Which is spinning like a kid's pinwheel in the strong west wind.

And gushing cool, sweet water (yes, of course I had some!) into the trough, which is full and sloshing over with each burst of cool liquid.

After hours of dust and empty sage, this little splashing trough was like an oasis.

Hadn't been doing that for long, though. The marsh grass that grew below is half gone from the drought, the white soil blowing away from the sides. The overflow is just now reaching the plants, after trickling down the sandy slope.

Still incredible to see the liquid rushing out like that, sloshing out to create life.

Even the little maskless heeler stopped to stare for a while.

A few miles south I stopped to glass the greasewood flats, spotting one nice buck, when I noticed him running past something white.

A closer look identified the bleached skull of a buck antelope, resting on its horns and nose.

So the heelers and I took a walk.

As is normal in cactus country, the little maskless sister dogs my heels, on the assumption I'll steer a course around the cactus clumps.

I don't, normally, since these boots can walk right through, but when she follows like that, I do.

As we got close, she charged ahead and circled the antelope bones, looking back to see if I noticed what she found.

Like I just ordinarily take off to walk through the desert, for no reason.

A mature buck, probably lost during the 2000-01 winter. Since he still had his horns on, probably early in the winter. Bones were weathered and brittle (most didn't survive the drive home).

Checked the alkali lake in the corner of that pasture, which was loaded with snowmelt and crowded with antelope last year.

Dry, with no antelope this year.

Not quite true, though. There was at least one. After a successful game of hide-and-seek by the old Indian firepits, I noticed a spot on the trail.

A damp spot of antelope pee. And fresh, green antelope turds.

A short jaunt to the north we found them, two bucks feeding. Not far from where the eldest son shot his first antelope.

Not far from where youngest son got his. The day the small reddish arrowhead I found and gave to him fell through the hole in his pocket, never to be seen again.

And I forgot to ask yesterday: ever seen a urine pedestal?

Neither have I, until yesterday.

It was on the leading crest of the dune where I gave the sisters their play break. A small flat balanced disc of hardened sand, about 20cm across, about 10 cm above the dune on a skinny pedestal no more than 3 cm in diameter.

Close examination of this unknown phenomenon found the usual pee pit and ripple marks of some large animal relieving itself in one spot, with a main jet sinking straight down into the sand. And then the dry sand was blown away, leaving this mushroom of urine-soaked sand to dry and harden in the sun.

Again, no camera when you really want one.

Oh, and on the voting.

For the first time in over 20 years the wife and I have declared a party affiliation. And now we'll get all the promotions, fund-raising requests and flyers that we have been avoiding for so long.

But this was the first time in a long time that we had concerns over who gets on the ballot.

No, no one we really like. There are just a couple people we wanted to make sure did not get on the ballot, so we changed affiliation to vote against them.

As wife said, it feels good to declare ourselves again, instead of hiding behind "Independant." And in a town of this size, we ourselves just increased the size of our party by more than 2 percent.