Food, Groceries, Mess, Chow, Snacks....

.... you'd think that the week was completely taken up with food, and you'd be mostly right.  All the food for every pack trip is prepared here at the ranch and then reheated in camp.  So, with two relatively large trips coming up back to back, and me going on the first one, I had to prepare ALL the food for both trips this week.  So, one trip food for 11 people for 3 days and another trips food for 9 people for 5 days.  Lots of shopping, baking, cooking, etc.

White & Ital Cheese Bread, Biscuits, Oat-Raisin cookies

Brownies

Just a few of the items I prepared were Strawberry-Rhubarb & Wild Berry pies; 3 types of cakes, various cookies & Brownies, cheesecake; 

Hollandaise Sauce

Mushroom Gravy

Pork Tenderloin with mushroom gravy, Flank Steak and roasted red potatoes, Seafood Pasta, Marinated Chicken Breasts, etc.; Lots of breads including w/w rolls, Italian cheese bread, white bread, french bread, and so on.

Triple Citrus cheesecake

Wild Berry Pie

In addition to baking & cooking, we also moved more horses up to the ranch from winter pasture.  As with any ranch-related task, it's never as easy as it sounds.  We started the day with a plan to go pickup our pickup and the ranch's horse trailer from the tire place where we'd dropped them the day before, and use them to help haul horses.  Headed down with the 4-horse on a ranch truck, and a 2nd two-tone truck to be repaired.  Once in town, we dropped off the two-tone at the repair shop & then headed to the tire shop where we discovered that the horse trailer & had only gotten 3 new tires instead of 4, so we'd have to return it later.  Then, the ball on our pickup was the wrong sizes for the 4-horse. So, we thought we'd just switch balls, but our "stinger" was locked on & we don't have they key. (info side note:  Many towing vehicles today, have a ball/hitch setup called a Receiver Hitch.  The part that the ball is bolted onto, is the "stinger" and can be easily switched out in most cases so that the balls themselves don't have to be changed.)  So, BACK over to the repair shop that we had just visited to drop off the blue two-tone, to see if he could either cut off the lock or loan us tools to unbolt the balls from both stingers & switch them.  He DID have tools, and it's a good thing they were big because it took a T-Rex size pipe wrench to get them off.  THEN, back to the tire shop to get the 4-horse trailer where we'd dropped it to put the gooseneck trailer on the ranch truck.  (Our pickup can only haul bumper-pull trailers, hence all the shuffling).  Finally all set to go, so after 2 more quick stops, we headed to winter pasture, where we arrived just in time for a massive downpour.

We took shelter in the vehicles until the storm passed.

Josie was NOT enjoying the storm as much as she typically would.

Once the storm passed, we were able to move horses into the holding pen and get them caught.  I do have video so will add later if I can.  In the meantime, here are a few pictures of them after they were corralled. 

 

And here I am on my way out w/ the 4-wheeler & a small load of horses in the 4-horse trailer.  (Shout out to Wayne & Sylvia here - we're putting the truck to work already!)

So, that was a look at our week through Thursday.  Next blog I'll catch you up on the last minute preparations for the trip and the trip itself!