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8/25/12, Burns, OR - The past two days of Rest and Recuperation have been fantastic. Both the lads and myself needed a couple of days off to unwind and pack in some more feed.  Thanks to my wonderful hosts, Pedro and Toni, we haven’t lacked for a thing.

The guys are making the most of their time here. In just two days I can see where they’ve added a little body fat.

While the lads were munching, I used the time to get ready for the next segment of the trip. Leaving Burns, we have a 140 mile crossing of the high desert to the town of Lakeview, in southern Oregon.  With the drought and open range, I don’t expect to find any significant amount of forage for the horses.  Also, sources of water can be as far as two or three days apart.

When I pull out in the morning, the wagon and trailer will be fully provisioned with food and water. Here’s a list of the horse supplies:

Hay (8) 100 lbs bales

Oats (10) 50 lbs bags

Water 118 gallons (twenty reserved for my use)

This is 2250 of feed and water alone, which is enough feed for 8 days and water for 3 days and 2 nights.

As part of the preparations, I unpacked, cleaned and repacked the trailer. Here you can see the hay (thanks to my hosts for donating 4 bales).  In this picture I’ve cleaned out my 30 gallon water barrel and I’m refilling it.

Yesterday, Pedro ran me over to the feed and grocery stores so I don’t have to make these stops when I head out of town.  Afterwards we had beer and Chinese food.

The lads, off to eat again.  This picture highlights the fact that different horses assume the leadership role for different things.  Generally, Bill is the boss.  For puling, they all know that Doc is the boss. This picture shows that Bob is the leader when it comes to moving to new sources of feed.

This morning, I put 4 new shoes on Doc and reset Bob’s front shoes.  By that time, the lads had been on good pasture for about 2 days.  In the picture below, you can see that Bill now has both calm and rested eyes.

Every once in a while, a horse just has to be a horse!

Tonight, I finished loading out the wagon and trailer. With a full larder, clean wagon, clean laundry, horses re-shod, and a full supply of feed and water I’m ready for the next segment of the trip.  Thanks to my hosts Toni and Pedro we have had a very nice R & R period.

One of the local merchants donated three 25 pound bags of carrots. Unfortunately, with the warm temperature I think many of them will go bad. But, in the meantime ...

 - I’m creating some carrot-holics.