Crowley Road - road trip!

Spring is on hold while some of the strongest winds that we have had in at least a week, are in a real hurry to get as far East as they can. The squalls are marching through one right after another. Tuesday morning it was 67 degrees at 0300. I know the time very well as that was when the wind pried up one of the sheets of roofing on my hawk house. Yesterday evening the temps dropped 30 degrees in three hours.

Today it is a bit better, so it was time for a road trip. I darn sure didn't want to fly, so the Dodge would have to do. My intention was to drive up to the access point to the river that I found with the plane last week or so.

The roads are pretty bad in spots, so it quickly became apparent that it was going to take a while. The area was burned over in 2006, so the sage is sparse. The land was replanted by the BLM with Crested Wheat and Sage. The only growing things that we saw was Cheat Grass and weeds. Actually there was some grass growing as well. Just not a lot.

For the most part there isn't very much noticeable wildlife in the area. We did see
Antelope, Redtail Hawks, Prairie Falcons, Golden Eagles, Ravens, Mule Deer, assorted small birds, primarily Horned Larks, and a Badger.

The Antelope were in small bunches, and pretty jumpy.

I was taking a picture of all the tumbleweeds that had bunched up in a draw when a bunch of Antelope came running along the ridge.

A large male Badger checks us out from a pile of Lava.

The storms began again and the area that we wanted to go to was still 29 miles ahead of us,  the squalls were intensifying, so we elected to turn around and finish some other day. It had taken about three hours to get the 32 miles that we had traveled.

We drove down to check out one of the line shacks down by the river. It is tucked up against a bluff to cut some of the wind.

On our return I chose a different path through one of the wet spots and  got stuck. Luckily after putting it in four wheel granny gear, I was able to get it rocking and pulled out of it. It would have been a very long walk !                                                                                                                                 

The Mule Deer ran along a ridge and into our sight.