Another morning flight, taking off right after sunrise.

(And yes, that shot was taken from outside the airplane. And yes, we were moving at the time.)

Looking for these.

Once again our transects took us across low sagebrush desert, up to cloud-capped mountains.

In between, we passed over relics of the last energy boom to strike this part of the world. Structures a quarter-century old:

An abandoned mansion built entirely out of salvaged and stolen wood.

I'm told great horned owls were living there last summer.

Owls also claimed this 1980's geodesic dome many years ago.

The last boom brought hundreds of squatters out onto the desert. Most camping wherever they liked, legally or not. Many actually bought land, and tried to turn the desert into small ranchettes. There are two or three out of the dozens that have survived.

But most quickly failed and were abandoned. Left to burn or blow away.

Not all the failures out here in the high desert were because of the end of the boom. These concrete culverts were set upright in the ground back in the early '80s.

Any idea what for?

Give up?

They're nesting islands for waterfowl.

No, really.

Before this drought hit us in the mid-'80s, that dry playa lake was filled with spring runoff every year. We put those structures out to give ducks and geese a place to nest away from ground predators (coyotes & foxes).

And it worked. Counted over 600 ducks out there one summer. The "shoreline" is littered with spent shotgun shells. A hunters' wetland paradise hidden in a desert.

But no more.

Folks with short-term memories, or shorter lives, have been raving about the flows coming down that creek this year. It has been a long time since water got within miles of that playa.

But it used to do so much more.

At the north end of one transect, as the pilot banked against a mountain covered with dying pines, I managed to snap a shot of the historic crossroads country to the north.

The Oregon Trail. California Trail. Mormon and Emigrant Trails. They're all there, in that shot.

Two transects later, as we crossed over the Atlantic Branch of the Continental Divide, our Cessna got slammed to the side, like we'd been hit with shrapnel. And the beating continued until we'd crossed safely onto the eastern side.

Downdrafts. The high winds predicted for 8 o'clock AM arrived right on time.

"That's about as rough as you want to take it," the pilot advised.

A few miles further, we finally spotted this, what we'd been seeking for so many days:

The end of the last transect.

Two herds down. One to go.

Starting in six and a half hours.

'night.