Ride horse all day, no fences.

It is a drought year here. Most years the valley is all green, this year it's intermittent.The title says it all.
That's Baits Mountain in the background. The endangered Argali (think bighorn) sheep live there. One morning we got up very early and rode horses between the river and the mountain

until we came to a gully leading into it. We climbed for awhile and then our guide, a woman named Ahrona, spotted them! We all grabbed binoculars. I mostly saw their rumps as they leaped away from us...a ram, a ewe, and 2 small ones. They vanished into a ravine. We rode on and caught another glimpse a bit later of just 2 of them, silhouetted against the sky just before they plunged over the ridge.  
Hmmm...well,like I said, photos can't capture it. You can ignore these next 2..boring. 

But, you should know this (Greg Smiley and other bicycling aficionados): there are people bicycling across Mongolia as we speak! Dust storms, sand storms, rain storms, the whole nine yards. We did bike here at the preserve one morning and it was quite pleasant: perfect weather, a hot breakfast before and a hot shower after. We went to a couple of small lakes to see birds. There were some birds, but nothing we hadn't seen before on the river. But it was a good ride.