About half of the attendees showed up Friday night, and several more vehicles appeared Saturday morning. The get-together was organized into 3 class sessions (Sat morn, Sat afternoon, Sun morn). And the eight instructors held classes on topics ranging from birds, wildlife, bugs and other slithery critters to botany, geology, and photography.

The first most impressionable sight was the abundance of mormon crickets, which, by the way, we learned weren't crickets at all but grasshoppers. The road to the campground was literally covered with the critters either still hopping, hoping to make it to the proverbial other side of the road, or at peace in their final resting place; a casualty of modern mobility but also doing their part in the food chain.

Each instructor held his/her class twice during the weekend to give people a chance to take in as much education as possible. Since I was one of the teachers, I only had 1 free slot to sit in on another class. And since part of that time was needed to scope out the area to see where my class should wander to practice shooting, I didn't get to sit in on the whole class. But I wandered into one that was being held in one of the picnic shelters: Native Wildlife - Hands on Learning presented by Brent Olson from the Division of Wildlife Resources in Millard County.

What fun this was! Mr. Olson was very prepared with boxes of skulls (we played the "what critter did this skull come from" game), horns and antlers (again - "which critter dropped these", and "is this a horn or antler"), and various pelts (a buffalo being modelled here by one of our 4-legged participants). And finally, we had a truly hands-on experience. Mr. Olson, to prepare for this class, had placed cages filled with leaves in 2 different streams, and let them sit for 2 weeks. He brought the cages to the class and we got to don plastic gloves (provided by Mr. Olson) and dig through the leaves to see what kinds of bugs had gathered. We noticed different types of critters from the two different streams.

My class, Nature Photography, started out with a discussion of equipment, composition, animal behavior, and other things to look for. On Saturday afternoon, we got a quick but powerful storm surprise which caused everyone to run for cover. The photography group and the crickets group shared a tarp for the duration, while others found picnic shelters or simply got out their rain gear.

But the storm was over before we knew it and off we went in search of photographs and exercises in composition. Check out the gallery for some of the things we saw.

I wish I could have attended some of the other classes, because the buzz at the potluck dinner was enthusiastic. The group learned about, saw and photographed some wonderful stuff. The potluck dinner itself was soomething to talk about. People brought everything from soup to nuts and everything in between. We pigged out on chips and dips, breads, salads, soup, meat dishes, fruit, and wonderfully decadent deserts.

After dinner we wandered over to one of the group campsite gathering places and congregated around the campfire to reminisce about past Basin and Range Weekends. In attendance were 2 people who had been with the Salt Lake Audubon since its inception. We also had some lively discussions about the days activities.

The trip concluded with one final session Sunday morning.

I think I echo the sentiments of each and every participant when I say a good time was had by all. I look forward to next year. Good job, Keith.