Pete says that you don’t have a good story unless something happens that is calamitous. We had something happen here last night that at least in my mind qualifies as hardship. Yesterday, like most days, was uneventful. By the day’s end we had nothing of note to pass on to friends, family members, or countrymen. This was a good thing. I actually felt smug.

Now we have a story. We crawled into our tent at 10 p.m. I began to doze, then clang, clang, clang. I knew that Tyra was tossing her water bucket around. It wasn’t empty – we checked and filled all the on-trailer water buckets before retiring.

Then bang, bang, bang, bang. I knew that Raudi was banging on the metal base of the trailer and going at it with considerable verve.

Then smack, smack, smackity smack. I knew that Hrimmi was lip flapping.

Woof, woof, woof. The dogs began barking.

I buried my head in my sleeping bag and put my hands over my ears.

Pete, who was also bothered by the ruckus said to me that I’d pitched the tent too close to the trailer. My response was that this was a good decision, otherwise, we would not know if something was wrong, and quite obviously, something was amiss.

Pete then mumbled something about this being the end of our trip. Now Pete is a very mellow guy and so I took his grumblings to heart, saying that once we solved the problem, that everything would be just fine.

“What do you think the problem is?” he asked.

“Bugs,” I said, adding that I forgot to put the bug dope on them.” (This was something that I’d been doing every night of our trip thus far.)

He got up and did what he could to make our China dolls more comfortable. He gave them additional hay, dosed them with fly spray, and filled Tyra’s now empty water bucket. This calmed them down and we went to sleep.

As I dozed off, I continued to harbor the suspicion that the horses weren’t all that uncomfortable. Rather, they were having a good time. This reminded me of a tattered pencil cartoon we have on our refrigerator door. It’s of two apes, Mikey and Bubbles. Mikey is ripping apart a guitar and Bubbles is playing a piano that he’s torn apart. There‘s a busted drum in the background. The two have smug looks on their faces. The caption underneath reads: “Mikey and Bubbles: Gorilla Songwriters.”

The comparison is this – in both instances, the animals were feeding off one another, in a manner similar to children. In the instance of the horses, they calmed down after they got what they thought was much needed attention.

Animals are way smarter than we think.

In the future, to keep the animals from going ballistic, I will brush them and put bug dope on them if its buggy.

Today was a good day. We went in search of a trail up Bonanza Creek Road outside of Dawson and reviewed the dredge devastation. There were many, many piles of rock and gravel. And there were dozens of machines, moving it all around. Sad to see active land rape. At the end of the road interpretive center, we were given directions to a nearby trailhead.

We rode the Heritage Ridgeline Trail, which was well marked. It hadn’t had any maintenance work done in some time. It started out as a gravel road and became a single track. It went up, up, up. We didn’t make it to the ridge because we spent so much time today looking for a decent riding trail. We did make a turn to the left 1 ½ miles out onto the Great Trail. There was a long boggy section that made me nervous, but the horses assured me that it was okay to go through it.

On the return trip, at the base of the road, we met a man with a long beard who had built a greenhouse on the topmost portion of his Volkswagen van. I says to Pete that he reminded me of our deceased neighbor Jim, except there was no crane on his property, like there was at Jim’s place.

Once back in town, Pete parked the trailer in the shade, for now the temperatures were in the 70s. The trailer is made of aluminum so in such instances the temperature is 10 degrees higher.

I checked my email in the Dawson City visitor’s center. Pete talked with an interpreter about his getting horses. Tomorrow, on the way out of town, we’ll go back before leaving Dawson and pass on additional information to him.

We took showers, did laundry, then returned here to the Rock Creek Campground. Ryder is sitting on the picnic table, hoping to get more than a glimpse of Squirrely Whirly.

Next: 167. June 19, 2024: Day #14, Walker Creek Campground