Spent the day out in the field with Ryan and Ed. The original plan had been for a large park contingency to journey down into Palmer Creek and practice skills in land navigation, off road driving, fossil spotting and identification, etc. But when it came to that morning, the only people who went were us three. Since the lower elevations are a bit mucky yet, we opted to drive the rim of the Palmer Creek Unit. That area is surrounded by ranch land, and there is a spider web of two track roads stretching throughout the region northwest of the town of Kyle. Within the park's boundaries up above the rim, there are even more roads. Ryan set his GPS to record the day's path in order to create a better map for his and other rangers' use. The big find of the day for him was the realization of how easy it is for poachers (fossil, rock, animal) to access the area from these relatively decent roads. No one is out there save a few ranchers. With such a high view over the region, Ed was spotting old river channels in remote areas, and spotting places that are very likely to have a large number of fossils. Locations the park should be aware of and possible check out with the assistance of the tribe. For me, it was a visual treat, and I shot a lot of pictures. I think some will be quality enough to use in my publication project idea for the park. It's interesting to be spending time on rough roads and be gaining an understanding of how to properly navigate them, seeing what the vehicle is actually capable of. Not a world I grew up in, but a world I'm learning to love. There's such an appeal to the roughness.

For dinner, a whole slew of parkies gathered at Ryan's, and we played a game of cards to end the night.

These photos are just a quick representation of what I got today. I'm going to have to spend a lot of time going through everything to pull out the best shots and clean them up for use. These are in order as we drove the various roads, from east to west.