It was Shyla’s turn again, but at least today we only had a modest 23 miles planned. It was nice to sleep in a bit and enjoy breakfast before hitting the trail around 10am. We appeared to have left the highly populated parts of the mustang’s environment because we only ran into 2 very timid and young bachelor stallions. They didn’t even bother trying to pursue Shyla and me.

A few afternoon thunderheads moved in as we covered the miles and I could see lightning and hear thunder in the distance. Lucky for us we seemed to avoid the rain and managed to dodge the showers. The miles seemed to creep by a lot slower without the entertaining mustang interactions and I mostly listened to various audiobooks on my phone.

In the late afternoon we arrived at the Sweetwater River. We hadn’t seen water that wasn’t green and coming out of a cattle trough in a week so it was a welcome sight to see so much running water. We followed the river for a couple miles and soon arrived to the campsite my mom had picked that was right along the river. There were green trees and soft grass; it was a real contrast to all our other campsites in the Great Basin.

As my mom and I were putting my saddle into the tack room the welding on one of the door hinges broke and the tack room door was left swinging from one hinge. "Okay," my mom and I thought, "that’s one more chore to add to the list for our upcoming rest day in Lander." Naturally, once we got the horses settled and climbed into the camper the rain I had seen on the horizon arrived. My mom and I quickly dashed back out to put the horses' rain sheets on. Better to be rained on in camp than while riding, though!

#2018CDT