Day 1: Departures - 21km

We couldn’t believe the day finally came that we were to depart on our journey. I don’t think I slept at all, worried that Lux would escape again or some other shenanigans would go down. We were also waiting to see how the swelling on his leg would be. We got up at 6, and the swelling had gone down! It was happening. We had a very touching interview with the Rhodenizers, and were on our way at 10:30am. Just up the road, Ora spooked from a man raking leaves, and we had to get on and off about 4 times to adjust our packs and pick up things falling off. We made it to the Atlantic 2 hours later, and were greeted by some lovely locals and the EIEIO crew. Our only family was bringing us some last minute lunch. We met the lovely Beatrice Schuler, who got some amazing snaps of us, and said our goodbyes and were off an hour later. Joseph caught up to us on our bike, and we were all in esctatic disbelief it was actually happening. We were on a long dirt ro

ad surrounded by forest, we had looked online and had hoped we’d just find a campsite, but after walking for a while we were getting nervous as our prospects where nonexistent. I asked someone driving by and they directed us over the highway to the old railroad route. This led us to the lake he mentioned, but still no grass for the horses. We finally cut out of the trail and came upon a large front yard and asked Rodger and Sheila if we could stay there. We were relieved to find a campsite, even though it was two hours and 6km more than we thought. We hobbled the horses, but Lux kept hobbling up onto the road. The black flies were TERRIBLE. To stop Lux going on the road, I tied him to the highline, and mom and dad brought hay, so we had food too. But he was going crazy. I knew the bugs were bad, but I thought he was angry being away from home. He managed to slip his lead along the highline and bulldoze Ora, then wrapping himself around a tree. Looking back, it was the millions of blackflies driving him nuts. We were all exhausted from the long day in the sun, and hadn’t eaten. After rearing and being generally very angry, we managed to help him unwind himself from the tree and get him back to the centre of the line. By this time it was past dusk and the blackflies were going away as the cold came in. I gave him some “Chill” supplement and he totally relaxed. We were so relieved

Mom had made us veggie burgers and brought the horses water. Man, it was an exhausting first day. Jewel and I also got into a fight earlier in the night, and all the emotion and exhaustion added up to one long day. We went from such a high, to a stressful low. But there was always tomorrow.