We finally had a short day planned, just 20.5 miles. I definitely enjoyed sleeping in an extra hour and taking my time in the morning. We got on trail at 10:30. Around 1pm the trail turned from single track to pavement and we walked along the side of a road for about 2 hours. The road went through a tiny town whose biggest namesake appeared to be its hot springs. Sadly I did not have time to check them out for myself, not to mention Shyla is not a fan of blacktop or the traffic that comes with it. So she was on a mission to get through that town as fast as possible and poor Takoda had to jog along next to her to keep up. Once out of the town the trail returned to dirt and stayed relatively flat as it crossed through grassy pine woods (terrible description but it's the stuff in the pic). I wasn't too confident about our grazing situation in camp for that night so 4 miles before camp we stopped for an hour so the horses could fill up as much as possible. Sure enough, there wasn't any grass in camp so I was glad we took the time to eat earlier.

#2017CT