First words out of the pilot's mouth, as he stepped out of his truck to stride across the tarmack to the hangar where I had been waiting but a few minutes, were:

"Humid out, today."

Well, I actually hadn't noticed. The skies were clear, except for a low cloud bank in the east, and the winds calm, so I knew we could fly. That was all the further I had looked into the weather. But I had noticed the water dripping off the hangar eaves into the tall grass by the doorway.

Condensation.

He warned me might find fog up north, where we needed to finish our antelope count.

As we sat at the end of the runway and idled the engine just a little longer than normal, the pilot noted it was damp enough for a little carburetor ice. When he called dispatch to let her know we were preparing to takeoff, she came back to advise that, just for our information, a couple of my compatriots had just canceled their flights, maybe a hundred miles east of us, because of fog. Pilot replied he wasn't surprised, since our temperature and the dewpoint were only 1.2 degrees apart.

But the final omen came half-way down the runway, as the pilot shouts out "Move it, duck!" and made a hard, dodging veer to the right. Giving me just the briefest glance of some bird flying across our path to the golf course ponds on the right.

The sun was just peeking out over the clouds when we finally got airborne.

Rather than simply flying the fifteen minutes north to our count area, the pilot took us high, to get a peek at the sky conditions where we needed to work.

What we saw was this.

Fog.

A solid blanket of fog in the river valley to the north and east, flowing in between the mountain ranges to try to claim the basins below us.

We need to count on the other side of those mountains on the left.

But not today.

Twelve minutes after our wheels left the ground, we brought them back again. The landing was unusually rough, with a tail wrenching motion. The pilot apologized as we turned onto the taxiway. He explained that, with our plane, you can either make a two-point, or a three-point landing. But coming down on the nose wheel is tricky, and he almost always opts for the safer two-point landing, bringing the nose wheel down after the side wheels are solid on the ground.

But today, with the windsock completely limp, he just couldn't resist trying the harder three-point landing.

We try again Friday.