Today was our last day of photography until we reach Zion. And that's if we go to Zion. We discovered yesterday that there's a huge fire near Brian Head that is blanketing Southern Utah with smoke. We're still four days away from Zion, but the fire is only 5% contained and still growing.
We started the morning with only a general idea of what to photograph. There wasn't a cloud in the sky last night, so we skipped sunrise. Leaving at 7:00 seemed early enough. When we reached White River Overlook, we found the same two bighorn rams I photographed last night. We photographed them as they walked along the road, and then followed them when they selected a ridge to wait out the day in one of the canyons. They were generally very cooperative and one continued to watch us until we left.
We stopped briefly at Quinn Road to photograph the prairie dogs, but the morning sun meant we were photographing the prairie dogs on the opposite side of the road. They weren't used to us photographing there, and they weren't nearly as tame and cooperative.
There was only one area of this section of Badlands National Park that we hadn't explored yet, and that was the final segment of the Sage Creek area. True to its reputation as a good wildlife area, we found a small herd of bighorn sheep on the ridges near Hay Butte Overlook. For a relatively small herd, they had a very large number of young lambs.
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The area around Hay Butte Overlook is a high tableland with thick virgin grasses. The homesteaders lived in the valley below, but the sides leading up to the tableland were too steep for their cattle to reach this rich feed. The homesteaders waited until the grass was ready to cut. Then, they took apart a mower and re-assembled it on the top of the tableland. Once the hay was cut and baled, they attached the bales to a cable from the tableland rim to the valley below and let gravity do the work.
Shortly after we passed Roberts Prairie Dog Town, a herd of bison crossed the road as they moved from the Sage Creek Valley to the rolling hills above. They streamed across the highway two or three abreast. Every time we thought the final group had crossed, another group would appear. It wasn't until the biggest and baddest bull had crossed that we knew the migration was finished. I'm guessing nearly a hundred bison crossed in front of us.
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We continued on the Rim Road until it left the park west of Sage Creek Campground. We didn't find any new landscape shots, but we certainly found plenty of wildlife.
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