The dirt road I had been on for the past two days was wide and heavily traveled, but early today we left it at last for a much smaller, rutted road and I was relieved to be free of traffic. The trail wound its way up to a fire lookout and as I was descending from the lookout the caretaker was driving up. He ended up grabbing some water jugs and driving back to catch up with me and the horses to offer us water because he knew we were in a dry stretch. The horses and I were very grateful and they drank 6 or 7 gallons between the two of them.

About 10 miles after that we got to camp, which was a cattle pen with a water trough; I put the horses in a section separate from the cattle, which were all very young weanlings. In the morning I gave the cattle the leftovers from the horses' breakfast (which they were ecstatic to have!).

#2018CDT