One of the things I hate about this job is the morning congestion on the highways.

Of course, since these pedestrians refused to yield the right of way, the heelers finally got to have their first ever close encounter with this species. Things were a little white-eyed tense at first...

but eventually the equines decided the canines weren't going to attack, and the canines realized the huge equines weren't going to stomp us all to death. And we had a morning sniff-fest.

Everything was peaceful until we drove off, whereupon the little maskless heeler gained the courage to throw a bark! at the offending horses over our shoulder.

As far as the rest of the morning, well, we put up two of these,

which tells you summer is almost over. Yep, hunting seasons start Monday. Well, for some, anyway. For others they started two weeks ago. Either way, the fall season starts in two days.

We're going to end the summer down by Zebulon's mountain. A family reunion, and maybe some balloon races (see last year's entry... I'm too lazy to link).

On the way to set up the barrels, we found one of these

and two of these.

(Oh, and that's roughly four times life-size. The lizard, not the bird. These Northern sagebrush lizards aren't that big. Just little herps.)

We also managed to interrupt brunch for these guys.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, that's a yearling buck on the left, and a grown buck on the right.

Also took a few minutes to find a couple of these,

and found this in the process.

Along the way, we visited with a gold prospector from Iowa (twice), and a friend I haven't seen since September.

And we saved the lives of these two.

Literally.

Really.

And that was just the morning.