One day, while Edie and I were riding along a railroad track service road, we saw that the road we were on was going to veer off hard to the right. Marla had put out water for the horses but we would have to follow the highway on our left to get to it. We crossed over the railroad tracks which had steep rocky sides to the rail road bed and thick weeds growing near the bottom of the rail bed. I got off to lead Jericho down the steep embankment and slipped in the rocks. I fell in front of him, but as luck would have it, he avoided stepping on me once more. He has had many opportunities to step on me when I have fallen right in front of him, but he never has. I really love this horse! Anyway, when we got on the other side of the tracks, we realized that we were in a cattle feed lot. These things are HUGE! They are so big that they have a network of roads running through pen after pen of cattle. They also smell pretty bad. The horses didn't know what to think of the thousands, (and I do mean thousands...) of cattle. At one point, we were trying to figure out how far we were from the road but there was a berm between us and the road so we were unable to see how far we were off the highway. Jacob was with us that day and we were all walking, so we asked him to go climb the berm to see where the highway was. There was an area that looked all cracked and cakey like it had once been wet and had dried up. When Jacob took a few steps in that, he sunk into a muck bed. It was a deep bed of cow manure! By the time poor Jacob, (wearing his brand new cowboy boots, of course...) got out of the muck, his boots were caked with cow poo. He was not happy! He was sure Edie and I had known what it was and sent him there on purpose. We finally convinced him that we did not do it on purpose... we assured him that his boots would dry and could be cleaned up again at that point... that appeased him somewhat. While we were walking on the inside of the fence near the highway, Charlie Overton saw us. He is the person we stayed with in Yeso, New Mexico. He was on his way to Hereford to take some cows to the packing plant. It was like old home week! We were so excited to see him again. We talked a few minutes and he was on his way. We finally found our way out of the feed lot and got on the highway again. The rest of the day went well... We have enjoyed this part of the ride so much... have a great week! Andi