Dix and I got up at 4 a.m. to take pictures at the Shirley Basin mine to document the reclamation while the grass is still green. We got there before sunrise like Ansel Adams would, but the mine pits are so deep, the light didn't fill in until about 7. We hop scotched from place to place to find good vantage points. The scale is so large it was hard to back up far enough for good vantage points. Here we were on top of a spoil pile of overburden removed from the pit in the distance. These pictures represent 20 years reclamation costing $40 million. The cows are straining to get in but we still don't have approval from the regulatory agency.
They are balking because they don't like the badlands-like slope in the far left background of this dual-pit reservoir.On the way home we had to stop for about 45 minutes at a sheriff roadblock.
We figured there must have been a heck of a wreck in the canyon. Took a little snooze. Woke up to "ba-ah, ram, ewe, bahh raam, ewe..." It was a sheep drive up the canyon. The guy ahead of us from Virginia was lucky the sheep guard dog did not take his arm off. What was going through the dog's mind was this guy is so clueless, I'll just allow him to scratch my head as long as he doesn't take another step closer to my sheep.
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