Last Friday's morning, we were running an evening antelope classification route. In the morning. But we got clouded out the evening before (no real rain, just thick, teasing clouds), so here we were in the new coalbed methane field.

The nice thing about running routes in the morning?

There's time to explore. In the evening, you're always in a hectic race against the setting sun, and the sun almost always wins. In the morning, all you have to worry about are heatwaves and antelope bedding down.

Heatwaves will totally mess with your classifications, the swirling atmosphere making it impossible to tell if an antelope out there 400 meters has a little black cheek patch or not. So you either quit for the morning, or only classify those critters that you jump up right next to the truck. And if they all start bedding down, you can never be sure if you're seeing all the fawns or not, unless you again just stick to classifying the groups close to the vehicle, assuming everyone will jump up to let you.

But otherwise, in the morning, you can take your time (lot easier on vehicles, too).

My route starts on what used to be an old 2-track road. Then a gas company drilled a well out in the rocklands near Seminoe, and bladed much of the road. After they failed to find what they were looking for, the feds had them try to plow and reclaim the road. Even fencing off the exit to the county road.

A barrier which I, and others, promptly drove around.

There was traffic on this road before they bladed it, you know.

So, for the past 15 years or so, we have been using a new 2-track road laid on the carcass of the gas road.

Now the methane folks are here, and they've bladed the road again. And expanded it considerably, with numerous spurs to their wells. And their proposed compressor plant. So far, the antelope don't seem to mind. Certainly speeds up the travel.

But once we leave the CBM road, we're back into the old woven-wire sheep pastures. Which means lots and lots of gates. Eleven all told (go through several twice). Which meant lots and lots of drag racing breaks for the heeler sisters.

Always a good thing, in the heelers' minds.

This route takes us to the backwaters of Seminoe. A nice place to stop for a minute or two and listen to the waves break on the beach.

Except there were no waves. No beach. No reservoir.

Not here, anyway.

We found it later on the route. The mouth of the reservoir is now about eight miles from it's full mark. And still receding, with an inflow of about 25 cfs and outflow over 500 cfs. Antelope love the new flats, however, out there taking advantage of all the weeds and forbs that are growing in the fertile dirt. Helps to imagine what this river bottom looked like before we flooded it.

The route passes three limestone outcrops that dominate this prairie, and the sisters and I climbed one to try for panoramic shots with the digital camera. And a view of the coal mine across the lake.

And found the top of the limestone covered with cobblestones. Everywhere.

Now, the river is two miles away, and a hundred meters lower, or so. How did these river-washed rocks end up here? I will have to ask my favorite geologist next time I see him.

The blue grouse hunting season opened on the first, so I also needed to set up my two barrels to collect wings from hunters' birds before we ran off to the green state for the holiday weekend. So I've been listening to the two steel barrels banging around in the back of the truck all day.

I also loaded the steel fence posts for setting up the barrels, squeezed in between the tool box and bed. Piled on top of the shovels I bring along for getting the rig unstuck.

But I haven't been stuck for months, and was sure I wouldn't need to get the shovels out today, as dry as it is.

I was wrong, of course.

Seismograph stakes and flagging are all over along this route, too, and the 2-tracks are well traveled and dusty from the surveyors. Our route road heads north, and then connects with a main, deeper two-track that fishermen use. It's a steep dropoff onto the main ruts, and I noticed the seismograph traffic had been avoiding it by driving parallel to the double ruts.

So I did the same. Until I noticed this went on for almost a mile before the new traffic merged with the old road. Not wanting to be party to the creation of another needless road (and yes, I've pioneered my share of new paths when the old ones were impassable), I backed up back to the junction, and drove off the edge into the ruts.

At just slightly the wrong angle.

High centered. As in, the ground is holding up my rear differential, and at least two wheels are spinning uselessly in the soft dirt.

Just to make the point, the front left dug itself into a hole, throwing a thick plume of fine dirt up through my open window, and into my eyes, mouth, hair, clothes. Everything. When I got home I found items in my front left pocket packed with fine sand.

And here we were:

Fortunately, the front end was clear. Just the rear differential was buried in dirt, and had to be dug out.

Which meant I needed the shovel. Which meant I had to unload the steel posts to get to said shovel.

The top four inches were soft, and easy to move. It was hard pan layer below that was holding up the truck. And the clump of sage behind the axle that was preventing me from simply backing out of this mess. Had to hack that off with the shovel blade.

So, it was dirty work, and the heelers had to stay in the cab, but we were out and rolling in 11 minutes. Start to finish. (And yes, I time all of my "stucks." Don't you?)

On the way out to the county road (And the methane folks rehabbed my route road! This time I stayed off, and used their new and improved access road.) hit a bump and the air conditioning suddenly switched to 'Defrost'. Well, chit. Just what I need, to have broken the truck with hunting seasons coming up.

A bump later, the Defrost changed back to A/C.

Ooookay. We'll leave it alone, then.

The seismographer surveyors marked all the roads the crews were supposed to follow with two big bundles of fluorescent flagging.

Someone else had a more primitive way of marking their route:

(Oh, and if you're interested, and read these entries eagerly, you may have missed a pic I added to the previous entry. Melissa, I'm up to 28 percent of the Diaryland limit on pic storage space... may need to be talking to you in a month or so...)