Dona Enjoying the Campfire
Gary's Pant Repair, Take Two
The horses had worked pretty hard on our trek up Prairie Reef and we were a little creaky, so we took the next day off. Dona repaired my slowly disintegrating pants, then relaxed and read. I tried but failed to catch some fish to augment Max's now meager diet. We saw Bald Eagles, a few Mergansers on the river, and Clark's Nutcrackers around camp. Sambo finally figured out his hobbles enough to get around and feed himself. We mixed horse pellets with Max's food, but as my son Ian would say, he ate the good stuff and "contrabulated" out the pellets. Later he finished off a not-so-hot freeze-dried dinner.
It rained a bit overnight; by morning the weather looked iffy. By lunchtime at the confluence with the South Fork it started clearing. We had a fine afternoon riding and hiking through Pretty Prairie.
Somewhere in Pretty Prairie we ran into another party of riders, a huge fat guy who would give Hoss Cartright a waddle for his money, and a few others. I was thankful I wasn't that guy's horse. They must have been out for a day ride or else he worked for an outfitter and they were headed to or from camp. A little further on we met Keagan Rumsey, the ranger we had met on our first day coming in. I envied her for all the time she got in this gorgeous country.
The South Fork of the Sun has good campsites all over. We decided to make camp just above Bear Creek, as it was only about eight miles to the trailhead so we would make it home at a reasonable hour. Or so we thought.
After the horses were belled and hobbled and off filling their bellies, I went down to the river to catch Max some extra rations. This time I succeeded, and he seemed to appreciate it. My pants were continuing to fall apart, so Dona patched them up some more before settling down with her book. I guess it's time to go shopping when we get back.
We woke up on our last day to more beautiful weather. I couldn't believe it -- we had had ten days of perfect weather. Our ride out was mostly uneventful, but pretty.
Our trip home was an epic. The weather had been so nice I had totally forgotten about the truck and its oil light problem until we were almost out. We got to the truck, unpacked and loaded up, and headed up the steep hill to get past the damsite. That required granny gear, and then we had a slow ride down the steep grade on the other side. We got past that and were heading out towards Augusta when the oil light came on again. I can't remember what we did, but we made it to Augusta. We tried to eat again at Chubby's but they were gone to visit their son in Colorado. We ended up eating someplace else and it wasn't as good.
As we headed on home, we started to see lightning flashes here and there, and it started spitting a little. Before we got to highway 200 both the oil light and the temperature light came on. We were approaching the Hutterite Colony, so I pulled in there and filled the radiator from an irrigation ditch. Then we headed over the pass. We called our friends Steve Kloetzel and Andrea Morgan and gave them a heads up that if we didn't show up in two hours to come rescue us. We called them every half hour or so until we were home. After we cleared Lincoln and were on the home stretch, we noticed an orange glow to the northwest. There had been a number of lightning strikes, and there were several fires burning. As we turned off on Kleinschmidt Flat Road to head home, we could see a large blaze burning up on Huckleberry Pass, about ten miles from our house. But all was snug at home, and Poppie was very happy to see her pals.
Some things we learned on this trip that bear remembering: