Rafting the Green River & Digging for Trilobites: What We Do in the West

So I haven’t been blogging for a while because I’ve been manning the oars of a white water (well, sometimes brown, green, or just a little frothy) raft in central Utah, the 84-mile stretch of the Green River from Sand Wash to the town of Green River. It was a great trip, and we all survived without getting heat stroke or sunburn (though my lips did get baked and blistered). Saw many Bighorn Sheep, terrific birds (Blue Grosbeaks, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, Yellow-Breasted Chats), and fabulous cliffs. Then right after we finished the river trip we drove an ungodly distance to a remote fossil hunting site (called U-Dig Fossils) near Delta, Utah, and dug for trilobites, 550 millions years old, and my wife found the coolest, best one (together we have a bucket full). Next up is a 4-day backpack in Yellowstone. In the meantime, here’s a cool pic I took yesterday of some godforsaken tree covered with sneakers along a desert road in the Great Basin.