Hiya Sweetie!
Despite my exhaustion, it still took me awhile to get to sleep last night, and I end up waking up at 3:40 anyway. I got up and took a couple of ibuprofen, and before I knew it, I was barely hearing my alarm! Almost slept through it! As it turned out, I could have slept later, because I decided to just finish the cereal dry that I had leftover from the airport "meal" from yesterday. Got everything packed up and ready, then got a text from my outfitter Chase that he'd be there just before 8:00, so I just read for awhile. He arrived right on time and we got everything loaded in his truck, and we drove about an hour to a trailhead south of Fishing Bridge, where two more trucks with livestock trailers and the rest of the crew and guests were. I met Keaton, the young wrangler working his first summer at Yellowstone, and also a newbie on the Thorofare Trail, Maureen, Chase's wife and partner (and boss :-)), and Ann and Tony from Louisiana, though they spent many seasons volunteering at Yellowstone. It took most of the morning to get everything packed on the horses and mules, and we finally hit the trail around 12:15. The day was glorious! Hardly a cloud in the sky, only a bit of haze from some distant wildfires that hopefully won't interfere with our trip. The first part of the trail still looked pretty barren from a huge fire back in 1988, but eventually we got into some older growth pine forest. We went just under nine miles to a lovely camp right on Yellowstone Lake, arriving around 3:30. I've been assigned a lovely, tall (just under 16 hands) Morgan/TN Walker gelding named Randy, who I 'm glad to report does not have that awful camel walk we experienced with those TN Walkers in Alaska! Of course, it was 3.5 hours of walking, though the mules kicked up a little in their string, so we had to stop briefly to get them straightened out. The lake was so inviting, I ended up putting my bathing suit on and taking a short dunk, which got all the day's dust off. Keaton showed me how to put up my tent, and a really cool self-inflatable mattress and sleeping bag. I reorganized my duffel (this morning I just threw everything in to see if it would all fit. It did, barely), and we had a sausage dinner, and it wasn't long before I came back to my tent to get an early start on my evening. We have a long 20 mile ride tomorrow, and they want to break camp by 7:30, and I saw today just how long it takes to pack these mules, so I'll be up early so I can figure out how to pack all this new gear! Good night, my darlin'! Love you!
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