Well the weather finally started to catch up to us this day. The morning started off well, nice and sunny, but by 1pm the clouds darkened. We got rained and hailed on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully it cleared up at about 6pm and we arrived at camp just after 7pm, having covered 26 miles.

Just before entering camp, there were signs posted warning about moose in the area. Our camp was also littered with a few piles of elk poop. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when Shyla woke me up at 3am snorting and spinning in circles on her highline. Takoda was very anxious too. Neither of them were going to let me sleep a wink so I got out of the tent to try to call them down. Normally I'm happy to go off into the woods and scare off whatever has the horses in a tiff, but generally it's just cow, deer, black bear, or elk as my options. Being in moose country changed the game though. I was not about to go tromping out in the woods at 3am if a moose was around, as they are known to charge and trample first and ask questions later. So after half an hour of upset horses, I finally figured that whatever had gotten them worked up had likely moved on. But the only way to convince the ponies of that was to walk a perimeter around camp and show that it was safe by not being eaten by anything. So off I went with my headlight on high beam and making plenty of sounds. Once I got back to the horses in one piece they seemed satisfied and settled down. Glad I could be their guinea pig, humph.

#2017CT