We wake to a magnificent morning but with a heavy cloud to the south. After checking the weather forecast we only have a 20 percent chance of rain but are very thankful for the cloud cover that keeps the suns heat at bay for awhile.

After walking for a mile or so down the road my hip starts to hurt. Gradually the pain seems to move to my whole left leg and I am soon hobbling. It looks like it is my turn to suffer today. I call a halt and tell Yeti I need to do some stretching before I can continue.

I grab  the mat and start to stretch on the trail doing some of the yoga stretches we have learned. Soon my hip has released and we set off again. A couple of hours later we stop for another foot break, more stretching and ibuprofen. The stretching seems to be helping and I am moving relatively pain free, well, as pain free as you can be when you are walking 20+ miles a day.

We are again listening to Brother Fish and making relatively good time as we climb the hills. The story is a good distraction as the pain makes me grumpy. As we get to the top of the hill I call a halt again. Time for a rest and more stretching. We look across the hill and see a band of about 70 horses grazing in the distance. We would have loved to have been closer. Yeti yet again marvels at seeing the wild horses. Seeing her happy lightens my mood somewhat.

We make it to Weasle Spring for lunch and decided we need to pick up some more water before heading off. We have read the notes about the trough being dry but the spring having water. It says it is 300 yards in the fenced enclosure so I head in looking for it. I find the pipe and congratulate myself on my brilliance at finding a way of locating the spring. I am fighting my way through the sage bushes, tripping over the twisted trunks, getting scratched by the broken branches and generally having a terrible time of it. I finally decide to abandon the pipe and head to the bottom of the gulch and follow the stream bed up. I look over at the stream bed to see it has water in it and did have from where I entered the enclosure. So much for my brilliant water finding technique.

As we approach the top of the hills we also come to the end of our audio book. It is a great book read by a brilliant voice actor. We started listening to this book what seems like a long time ago in New Mexico and now it is over. It is like saying good bye to a group of dear friends and we are both sad to hear the end.

We walk for a while discussing the book and what a great job the reader did bringing all the characters to life. As both Yeti and I are extremely tied and I am still in pain and grumpy we still want something to distract us so I look at what other books I have loaded. We try the adventures of Tom Sawyer as our next book, mostly because I already have it loaded on my phone.

We start passing concrete polls that mark the Oregon and California trails and Yeti tells me about what these are. We wonder at what the life would have been like for these people who spent 6 to 9 months traveling these trails in wagons. We think about us with our light weight gear and town stops every 5 to 6 days and think life must have been very very hard for these earlier settlers.

After another long day we eventually find a small patch of ground to pitch our tent at the intersection of two roads. We sit down for a break before battling the wind to cook and set up our tent. As we sit there and discuss the day a car comes down the road. We look at each other and think what are the chances. We have not seen anyone for days and as soon as we sit in the middle of the road a car comes driving down. It is not heading down our road so we sit and wave as it passes by.

Yesterday morning was hard for Yeti and today was hard for me. We have found this many time doing these things together. One day I rely on Yeti to pull me up and the next she will rely on me. I don’t think we have had a time yet where we have both felt down but I am sure when it happens we will still be there for each other.