Wednesday

Every morning, it was our responsibility to feed the horses, clean their hooves and saddle them up before we ate.  Each day, this task became quicker. 

Josh and Garret clean Flax's hooves

The boys learned to work in teams, and those that finished early helped those that were slower.

Grant and Cole working together.  The saddles were heavy!

We got on the trail again, and headed to Jenkin's Cabin.  This was probably our hardest day.  As I mentioned earlier, there were two Cavalcades.  Cavalcade A started from Point A and headed to point D.  Cavalcade B headed in the opposite direction, from Point D to Point A.  

We basically followed the stream for most of the day, but this direction was less traveled, and the trail was hard to find. Many times our wrangler had to get off horse to find the trail... and many times we were waaay off trail. 

Thomas fording the stream

We forded many streams, and the fauna in the area was gorgeous!

But somewhere along the way, Cory's saddlebags fell off his horse. One of the wrangler's went back to look for them, but since we were off trail, it was difficult to retrace our steps and find the bags.  Cory toughened the rest of the trip without his saddle bags.  The whole troop worked together to help him through this.

Our lunch spot (no pictures) was beside the stream, close to some Indian paintings that were over 4,000 years old.  Since this was the half way point of our trip, we met up with Cavalcade A to share the meal, and then head to the paintings.

We then headed away from the stream and up to Jenkin's cabin for the night. The sun came out solidly for the first time of our trip.

We all bedded down in the open, under the stars.  

Looking up at night was amazing, the milky way was a bright patch across the sky, and we all saw many shooting stars (at least anyone who was awake past dusk!)