When it's 06:38 in the morning and you're flying in a Cessna 180, en route to start your antelope trend count, this

is not what you want to see.

Fog.

The pilot and I had canceled the start of our antelope count yesterday morning, around 05:50. Totally overcast and damp, there wasn't even any reason to go to the airport. So he had gone back to bed (I assume), and I had stayed up, watching to see if the clouds would break.

They didn't.

My next flight wasn't booked until Thursday, but the pilot managed to change one of his flights (a relocation flight for radio-telemetered fish), and we then had this morning available.

Today, when I called at the same time, things didn't look much different than Monday. But there was open sky to the northeast, which is where we needed to start. We figured to give it a try, and hope the clouds broke as the sun rose.

And that the fog would lift off the airport.

Which it magically did, as I watched, driving in on the interstate. I'm on the radio, relaying our flight plans to dispatch, with not much enthusiasm that we'll even get in the air, and the fog over the east end of town just vanishes away. And there's the new golf course, and the airport.

We took off at 06:34.

You can see above what we saw four minutes later. No break in the cloud cover, no more open sky, and fog on the ground. Everything east of the mountain ridges was fogged in, the fog clinging as if for dear life onto the tips of the ridges. Trying desperately not to be blown away by the air mass pushing from the west.

We dropped low over the prairie, and confirmed it. Too dim to see antelope.

Since we were only minutes away, we made a pass by a sage grouse lek near our starting point. And found nothing. You could tell the country was nicely greened up, and a few antelope standing in the open seemed to glow with the morning sun. But many, including a buck just below my window, were practically invisible in the dim light.

Home, James.

We passed a pod of pelicans on the river, and the cottonwoods that had bald eagles nesting in them the past few years. Pilot flew one of our folks on the eagle nesting survey earlier this month, and was happy to report the balds are back here again.

Follow the river through the mountains, and we pass by the home town.

Where tomorrow, they will cut off our water and rip up our street, granting us the pleasure of having a water meter installed for the first time. My cowboy friend who had to move into town got one of those jobs, and had been threatening not to warn us ahead of time, perchance to catch me in the shower when the tap runs dry.

A minute or two later, we're back on the ground.

And I'm headed home to join the wife and heelers. Still reading the paper in bed.