The small town of Vernal has been growing on me.  The scattered oil and gas well pads amongst the beautiful high desert makes for an interesting landscape.  For a botanist, it is pretty awesome.  We have been spending most days scouting for plant populations looking for candidates for collecting seeds, vouchering, and of course getting lost trying to navigate the never-ending umarked roads….perfecting our map reading and GPS skills.  The afternoon rains have been promoting new plant growth as well as giving us some much needed 4-wheel drive time 🙂 We are targeting over 30 plants for the SOS collection this summer and so far we have found populations for about 3/4 of those and have made a few seed collections.  Making progress……slowly!

Jinny and I vouchering Cryptantha barnebyi on the amazing white shale formation!