Hiking

 

I went on my first long like a couple days ago. It was supposed to be a 5.5 mile loop. But there is a trail that is two trails at once (the Maah daah hey trail goes on for 96 miles so it combines with in park trails) so I thought I had gone to far and booked it back the way I came so I would make it to my show on time. I then got super mad when I realized I walk almost to my next trail change for the loop but I turned around because my trail was not labeled the same as it is on the map. But as it turned out I'm glad I did turn around because I saw a wild horse. And the wild horse saw me and neighed  happily and started running towards me (I was wearing a black baseball cap and grey t-shirt and am about the right height from the front and the horse's view was a little obstructed, so I assume I looked like a friend). Which scared me because I was a little on high alert because I almost stepped on a rattler earlier. But pretty quick the horse realized I wasn't another horse but it kept walking towards me slowly. So I put my hands in the air and tried to look large and imposing. I would actually LOVE to have a horse come investigate me but if it got upset and hurt me by accident I would have had a 2 mile hike to my car and a show to play at 7:15. So I gave the horse a wide birth.
Other than the horse my hike involved:
1) Almost stepping on a rattle snake and waiting for it to make the first move so it didn't get scared and then watching a good 2 1/2 ft of it slither off.
2) Wading through the Little Missouri River
3) Jumping over a smelly muddy crick and not quite making it
4) Balancing on a tree branch to get across another muddy crick
5) Doing it all again (except the rattler) because I turned around and came home a 1/4 of a mile from where my turn would have been. The lesson here is to compare the trail app on my phone to the in hand map and find mistakes like that.

More to come later, my Ambien is kicking in pretty well right now. If I kept writing it would just make less and less sense.

The Little Mo River

The others screamed while this little porker posed for me

It's possible to do it without getting too muddy, but you have to take off your shoes so you can balance on the underwater part of one of the logs.