And pointier. And more poisonous. And hotter. And HUMID. Nobody mentioned humid! Temperatures in the hundreds (See how good I am getting at Fahrenheit? I mean of course high thirties or forties C) I could maybe even take, but HUMID??? I thought this place was supposed to be a semi-desert!

Also, around Austin everything was way too green and almost forested. I'm now up in northern Texas (spitting distance from Oklahoma, really) and it's much more what I pictured. It's still pretty green but the locals assure me that's temporary. There are plenty of cactus, mesquite, agave, and cattle, and lots of red dirt, so it's pretty much meeting the "Texas quotient." Also the roads are very nice. It probably helps that they don't have so much freeze-thaw to wreck them.

So far I have not seen any guns, but I'm sure they're out there.

For the most part people seem very friendly, and I am starting to get used to the accent. It's kinda fun to listen to, especially this old local historian dude who knows everything and can talk for hours. In some ways it reminds me of my grandparents' farms, except for the oil stuff and the shooting people. Don't get me wrong, there are shotguns on my Grandma's farm. They're chained to a rack in the diningroom behind the door, and once in a while my uncle does have to shoot a coyote (pronounced coyotee down here, except by one old lady who just says coyot like I would)

So---we flew down to Austin, dropped off specimens at the University to get scanned (check out www.digimorph.org and you will understand what I mean---that site gives me a geekgasm), picked up some supplies, and drove up here to Seymour and Archer counties. Apparently County is very important down here---much more cohesive than the rural municipalities back home, as far as I can tell. Bonus of being in Austin was getting to meet Saya (see picture), who's been a tribe buddy for years, in the flesh. We had a great time just wandering downtown (I think) Austin, caught some kind of street fair, and generally just chatted. It was luvurly. Only thing better would've been the chance to ATS together, but that wasn't happening. I also caught my first sunburn, because I was pasty winter white.

So far we've managed to traverse the state, catch up with some semi-local fossil hunters and a local fossil-hunter/historian, Jack Lufton, who was Romer's field assistant back in the day and knows everything there is to know about Archer County, Seymour County, and probably Texas in general. It did take a bit longer than we'd hoped, so we spent a couple of days at less-than-ideal sites waiting for everything to fall into place to visit the uber site of Permian Palaeontological heaven. Because we REALLY did not want to piss of any of the locals. Bad idea in Texas. But anyway, we made it out there today just in time for the brutally killer Texas heat, worked on my third sunburn (apparently three applications of 30 SPF sunscreen over a five hour period aren't enough., and found lots of cool stuff that we probably won't have a chance to really explore before we have to drive back to Austin on Sunday---but anyway, a good trip all around, if not without its kinks (like coming back to the hotel today and having no water---they were fixing the pumps---then, when it did come back on, it was red-rusty-orange.

Just like the dirt.

Ah well. At least I got to see lizards :)