I set out Friday morning with three things I wanted to get accomplished. Although I had not originally planned to look for Desert Bighorn Sheep at Zion National Park until the afternoon, I made a sudden decision to turn in that direction about a mile before the intersection - and a good decision it was. A neighbor at the RV park had tipped me off regarding the area I should be looking and, while it took a couple of trips back and forth, they did finally venture out to where I could see them.(luckily not too far from a place I could park). In this image 4 rams (of varying ages) came together briefly, engaged in a little playful head-butting, then wandered off to browse independently.

Once the sheep wandered off I set out on the next phase of my quest - Utah Prairie Dogs near Cedar City. Teresa at Utah Division of Wildlife Resources assisted me in my quest with directions to a colony south of the city. With temperatures getting colder the "dogs" are not very active these days and it required a lot of patience just to get anything at all - 3 images over something like 2-1/2 hours. The lesson to take away from this experience is to seek them out in late Spring or early Summer when they are hungry and have young . . .

Next on the agenda was to head in the direction of the Bristlecone Pine Trail near Cedar Breaks National Monument in Dixie National Forest to seek out some Bristlecone Pines (naturally). It is said that the oldest trees in this particular stand are about 1600 years old, mere youngsters compared to those in the White Mountains of California, some of which exceed 4000 years. Still, to see something living that was a seedling during the Dark Ages is almost impossible to imagine. The major disappointment for me was I didn't expect them to be growing as straight and true as these seemed to be growing. The only one that was twisted and gnarly (as I expected from pics I have seen) was ruined in terms of an interesting photo because the Forest Service decided it would be nice to put a viewing platform next to it. Oh well, it was still a good day.