You see some interesting things out in the desert along the Continental Divide. Especially with the energy boom, and all the new gas, methane and uranium activity.

Like yesterday, I found this:

A perfectly good trailer.

Perfectly abandoned. A long ways from anywhere.

Near as I can tell, there was a lot of snow still on this road when someone left this utility trailer here. Which, according to the fellow from the coalbed methane field that I met this morning, 15 miles to the west, could have been just last week.

But now, here it sits. On a perfectly dry, dusty road.

In the middle of nowhere.

Today, a good eight or nine miles from that trailer, I happened upon...

The first badger of the season. Who I would have spent more time photographing, except he/she (I didn't bend down to check sex... feel free anytime you want...) was literally trembling.

With fear, I assume. Yes, the lips were curled in a snarl, and horrific growls coming from the throat, but if you looked in the eyes...

I was traumatizing this poor thing. So I abandoned my paparazzi attack and headed back down the road.

Soon passed by a young man in a white pickup.

Who backed up as I scribbled down the GPS coordinates for the badger, and came around to my window.

Judging by his Romanesque nose, earrings, western hat and shirt, and long braided ponytail covered with hand-stitched deer skin, I was pretty sure I knew which town he was from.

I was wrong. He's from Missouri.

He's the foreman for one of the roustabout services working in the gas fields to the south. And he asks...

"Do you know this country?"

You see...

He's looking for a lost trailer...