Even though we got an early start from central Nebraska, when we finally met Scott, the sun was setting. My nephew is currently living in the outskirts of the small town of Pinedale in western Wyoming. He had just finished a long, hot, hard day of field work in the sagebrush of the high plains. He was lucky to have a friend from Princeton, named Kiara (whom I had met at Mpala Research Station in Kenya in 2019), to help him with his data collection for his early work on his PhD project. When we arrived, everyone was hungry, so we headed into town where we had dinner. Scott talked about what he needed to get done and we made plans for the next few days. He invited me to accompany him and Kiara as they continued data collection the next day.
After some morning errands, we reached the first field site where I took some photos as they did their work. Through the afternoon we went from field site to field site; they collected data and Scott flew a drone over the sites to get another perspective. Unfortunately, we had to end things a little early as a thunderstorm was bearing down on us. Scott told me, “You really don’t want to be the tallest thing standing in sagebrush country under those conditions.” We got into the car just as the rain began to fall and headed back to Scott’s apartment.
We met up with my wife and finished the day with dinner at a dispersed camping site on Boulder Lake west of the mighty Wind River range. The lake is on U.S. Forest Service range-land. We shared the view with quite a few cows that were grazing the area around the lake. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was just the right spot for dinner at sunset. After dinner Kiara and Scott headed back home and we made camp on a hill overlooking the lake. The price for camping was right…free.
For some pictures from the field work and other highlights, click here. The sunset was unusually red because of smoke from wildfires in California.