A long distance covered

Sunday, Clara, Devin, and I dropped off Stasha with her mom, then we went to their friend Craig's house to watch some football and play music. I consumed enough libations to play guitar while lying on the floor (but had the wherewithal to take this picture).

Monday morning, I headed to Windfall Lumber in Olympia with Devin to work for the day. We spent about 10 hours building wall supports for a project he's taken on from them. It was a lot of work, but in some ways, the easiest $200 I've made.

Clara, Devin and I tried to have conversation that night, but we were all exhausted, and scooted to bed by 10pm. The next morning I got all of my stuff together and headed east. I encountered an area on I-90 that i was concerned I would not be able to drive through due to the snow in the Blue Mountains. There was several feet on the ground, but luckily the interstate was well-plowed.

I arrived in Othello, WA at about 1pm, and visited Heather at her Columbia National Wildlife Refuge office downtown. She was able to get out of work then, so we had a quick lunch at her house, and then explored a part the refuge that she lives at. It was pretty cool climbing all the buttes and coolies, but it was not too birdy. That night, we had some Mexican food, and then went to he Brunswick Bar that had quite a bit of game posters and otherwise.

Yesterday morning I got on the road at about 7:30am, and with only three quick stops, I got to Salt Lake City at about 6:30pm. It was pretty grueling. Shortly after getting to Bill and Marin's house, Bilsky texted me that there was a WESTERN SCREECH OWL in his backyard. The three of us quickly got going, and as soon as we got there, heard one. Within a couple of minutes, we got a great show of the two WESTERN SCREECH OWLS that are likely setting up shop in a tree cavity in his yard.


This morning I left the house at about 9am and drove up to the Bear River NWR in Brigham City. There had been reports lately of MCCOWN'S LONGSPUR and GRAY PARTRIDGE. I got the directions to each of them, and very quickly found a pack of about 16 GRAY PARTRIDGE. I found big groups of HORNED LARK that the longspur had been found in. I had no luck after almost an hour of scanning.

I then headed down to Antelope Island with the hopes of seeing a LONG-EARED OWL roost, and the CHUKAR I had dipped on the last time here. I search the Russian Olive trees off the road for a couple hours, seeing three porcupines (as I had seen last time) but no owls. I also had no luck with the CHUKAR. After a long day of searching, I headed back to Bill and Marin's where I am now watching an incredible film with Marin called "Saturday's Warrior."