NCC Trip Day Two

.Jay and I got up early to feed the horses at 0500. We tossed a thin flake of alfalfa to each of the horses and checked their water buckets. After we were sure they were all okay and eating happily we went back to the hotel for the complimentary breakfast. I saw a tray of what looked like pancakes and bacon. I put a couple of these little dollar-sized pancakes on my plate and put syrup all over them. After I started eating them one of the other guys told me they weren't pancakes but egg patties. "Really?" I said. I honestly couldn't tell. With syrup on them they tasted like pancakes. After gulping down our pancake-egg patties we went back to the stables and prepped and loaded the horses. As we proceeded north up I-25 we drove through a mountain pass that was completely blanketed with snow. It was beautiful but all I could think of was the wind chill factor in the trailer where the horses were. I stopped the convoy after an hour to check the horses but when I put my hand on their coats they were plenty warm. We continued on until we were out of the snow then started looking for a lunch stop. At lunch time we let the horses out for a little while to graze and drink water. It is important to find a stopping point that has both diesel and grass. We ended up stopping in a place called Chugwater, Wyoming to lunch. It didn't look like much at first but we found that we could tie the horses to a guard rail next to the grass while we ate some delicious gas station food (free bowl of chili with a tank of diesel). The guard rail also functioned as a picnic bench. After lunch we continued up through Cheyenne and then east into the Nebraska panhandle. We made it to Fort Robinson in record time and stopped at the park office to get our keys. We put the horses up in the barn and proceeded on to our "cabin" which was in reality a three-story Victorian style house from the fort's early days. It was a palace and was full of fire places and creaky wooden floors. After the mad scramble for the rooms we jumped back into the trucks and headed into town for dinner and groceries. We went into the grocery store in Crawford about three miles outside the fort. Crawford was named after an officer killed during one of the Geronimo campaigns. Crawford's unit ran into a Mexican unit south of the border while chasing Geronimo and a firefight erupted. The Mexicans accidentally killed Crawford while he was trying to stop the fighting. Anyway, Crawford is a bustling town of about 1,000 people (counting the dogs). We walked into the grocery store and bought $150 worth of food which was probably more than they'd seen in a year. Among the items purchased was a giant two-foot long beef chub that we were going to make hamburgers out of. The chub sparked a great deal of conversation and a new nickname for one of the troopers who picked it out. After that excitement we went to the town's only restaurant for dinner. The town of Crawford will probably survive for another year with the money we spent that night