The Rigs Up, Pal

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Less wordy, mo' piccy today.
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This dawn sky above greeted us this morning in a heartening way. Hopefully the next storm will hold off until Mark returns from today's big supply run after three weeks of waiting out the weather, construction and bad road conditions.
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Mark had reminded me to catch a photo of the rig from the first mesa bench. I brought the cats along since it was only going to be a short hike up there and back. They had been very miffed at their confinement during the heavy construction traffic. The dogs joined us and it soon became apparent that all parties were up to a much longer hike than I had planned. I should have known.
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We headed east along the first bench as usual and Dave found this amazing sandstone boulder. As old as the sandstone is, this one appears to be encasing even older rocks. These black rocks appealed to my imagination and reminded me of huge Anasazi pots. Dave is giving us his best vicious wildcat look.
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Beyond the second spring, the dogs found a new deer trail heading up to the second bench and it looked more knee friendly than our other trails so we all followed it upwards. The photo above shows Ming on the right, investigating these new rock formations and the high view.
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Here is the rig, a small town unto itself in the mud. While it hadn't rained in a few days, there were no winds or beaming sun to dry anything out.
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Oops! As I just said, the mud was still alive and well and helped this very large rig slide off into the ditch as he left the well site. All traffic came to a stop for a couple of hours until its companion rig with tire chains returned to drag him back to the main road. You can see the condition of the access road (the white patches are ruts full of standing water).

And to think that Mark is now still out there after dusk without chains after so many monsters like these have chain-gouged ruts in the road today nearly as deep as their tall axles.
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Here is the drilling rig right after the first heavy rainfall. The rainbow had an easy guess this time as to where the pot of gold lay. I missed the perfect shot due to camera problems AGAIN but the rainbow's base had been clearly resting at the foot of the rig just moments before.
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Next up: What it was like living with a drilling rig next door 24/7 and a report on if it really will leave at o:dark early tomorrow morning. We won't have to set any alarms for this event. Don't get too excited for us yet - we've heard that the next stage could be a wee bit more obnoxious.

Update: 7:00PM - Mark made it back home. It was warm enough that the mud did not freeze last night so he couldn't travel out "on the frost" this morning but he made it into town without too much misery. He noticed that our five mile road was by far the worst of any out here. He was not at all happy about the greatly deteriorated conditions he met this evening, despite gas field talk yesterday about grading the road today in preparation for the rig move. I guess they say what you hope to hear but do what they darned well please in the end. Unfortunately, it looks like another frost free night and it will be too dark for me to take photos of the rig getting stuck later. Oh, and those round-the-clock back-up beepers are starting to give me a serious migraine attitude.
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