Hello
It is hard to believe that we took our first ceremonial step away from the Mexican border almost a month ago. I am very late in making my first journal entry, but let me try to catch you up on what we have been doing, and what challenges still lie ahead for the me and the team.
Our first week was actually rather physically more stressful than we had counted on. This was due to having to follow exactly a GPS line on a map to stay on only public lands. These days of hiking miles through the desert in high heat in the middle of the day became our toughest challenge.
We moved up New Mexico via hiking and mountain biking and 4-wheel drive vehicles. The concept of 4 wheel driving should be explained. This is not driving on a highway or a road as you think of roads. This is driving cross-country following 2 track trails and riverbeds and if we had luck with us a dirt road.
As we got closer to the higher more mountainous country of New Mexico we had to give up hiking and the vehicles for horses. I’m an equestrian and this portion of the trip for me has been the most enjoyable so far. We spent four long days and three nights riding though the Aldo Leopold preserve. This trail is spectacular because it is on the continental divide and the vista is truly awesome. We had an outfitter for this portion and Becky Campbell, and Sherry Lanney did a fabulous job of keeping us on task and on time. We also had a forest service officer with us because he was more familiar with our route and knew the way through this country quite well.
One evening as we were sitting around the campfire, he made the comment that what we where doing was really very, very special. We all inquired as to did he mean our cross-country trek? He said no, the horseback riding, it seems the locals always talk about doing this part of the trail but they consider it too long and too hard. We felt rather pleased with ourselves as you can imagine.

Stay Well…..Richard