Man, one of those days...

One of those days where you have more photos to share than you could possibly find time and bandwidth for. Driving two hundred and thirty miles in the morning, probably a hundred of those on dirt in the desert, yielding 122 photos. A good day.

Not to mention two of the farthest leks checked, with birds on each.

So. Where to begin? Perhaps in the beginning...

Yesterday was a surprisingly good morning, too. Had to plow through the drift in front of the truck to leave town, and got out to the desert to find... dust.

Yep, dry as could be. Probably could have checked leks on Sunday, too. They had snow, you could tell by the dried ruts in the gas field roads, but either not as much, or the warm wind and sun just soaked it all in. Nary a puddle nor a drift. We could go anywhere we wanted.

Where I wanted was back to the spot where we found grouse strutting in the road on Thursday. To see if it really was a new lek site, or just a one-time thing.

Heading north on the main road, I slide to a stop to get a quick picture of the pink clouds in front of us, just touched by the bent red rays of the sun.

And get... nothing. Camera batteries are dead. After just three shots coming down the highway. Knew those batteries were getting too old to use. Okayyy, quick throw in the spare set and grab a poor shot of the pink. Then continue on north, passing the dual tanker truck (youngest son's professed desired summer job), and hook back southeast towards the, I hope, grouse.

As we barreled down the red road towards the spot, I could look out to the left and see a remarkable sunrise, a red glow over the nearly flat horizon.

I stopped, briefly, of course. Grabbed the camera, and got... weird whirring, clicking sounds. These batteries, too, which had been fully recharged, were too weak to even get the lens out into the shooting position.

Craaaap.

That's it for camera batteries.

To make matters worse, less than a half mile up the road, at a junction of red roads, I find...

Strutting grouse. Eight of 'em, with a hen hiding in the sage. Another new lek?? Just over a mile from the one I came to check? A new lek is always a good thing.

But me with no camera to document it.

As I race on towards the first "new" lek (which also had birds on it), I watch the tanker truck shuffle the grouse off the road behind me in my mirror. And then the sun pops up. A great, red ball peaking over the horizon.

And me without a functioning camera. (It wasn't until I was parked at the second new lek, which is actually the first new lek, that I remember one if the reasons I bought this Olympus camera is because it can use regular alkaline batteries. Six of which are in the backpack behind my seat. And now the sunrise is over. Craaaap.) If I hadn't been sitting down, I would have kicked myself for only packing one spare set of batteries on a trip to the desert.

As it turns out, though...

Today's sunrise was better.