Another month has come and gone here in Escalante, Utah. The first two things that come to mind are: passing the halfway point of my internship (good and bad) and the monsoon season. The latter is what the locals here call the rainy season. It is very typical for it during this season to be warm and cloudless in the morning. But by the afternoon, thunder storming and heavy rains, especially at the higher elevations. This can make planning our day out tricky sometimes. We came across our first flash flood last week, which was exciting. We must have missed it by minutes because after we turned around I saw in the distance the head of the flood and quickly ran over to watch it rumble by. It was very impressive but slower moving than I had expected.
As for being halfway done with the internship, I feel we have come a long way. We have learned a fair amount about the area in southern Utah, experienced many aspects of seed collecting, and over-come just about all the obstacles we have come across. Speaking of coming across, we saw our second bear not long ago. This time it was only a couple miles outside of town, which is rare, sauntering across the scrubland as we were driving by. It wasn’t exceptionally large but it did have a nice blonde color to it.

We are currently waiting on several populations to ripen at the moment. During the time that we are not monitoring these populations, we are mainly exploring new areas of the monument for plant populations we have not located yet. This has allowed us to see a good deal of the monument, which I am very grateful for.
Lastly, September is the last big month for tourism in these parts. That means we have to get our fill of restaurant food and TV (we don’t have cable) before everything closes up for the fall/winter. I have to say, I am looking forward to the cooler weather though.