Up a Creek without a Paddle..

.... but with two horses instead.   From the South Platte the Pony Express trail followed up the course of Lodgepole Creek to Sydney (of the US rail yard rather than Ozzie sun, sea and surf variety) and I was riding along Route 30 which runs parallel to the creek.

Sunday May 8th  and Mother's Day in North America.  I stopped up the road at John and Mary Aalberg's house in Chappell to beg some water to clean Mo's pastern. Daughter Diane was visiting and amazingly had just done an Equitape bandaging course and was keen to try out her new skills!  So here is Mo with his snazzy new bandage...

...and Mary brought out breakfast for me!    Mary misses the Colorado mountains of her original home, so has constructed a mini mountain with quartz rocks and ponderosa pine where she can sit and imagine herself back among the peaks ......

We were now passing into what is usually dryer territory, and I started to see these low cacti providing ground cover in dry places along the verge....

However the unusually high amount of rainfall this year has meant that there has been plenty of grass en route.

Besides Nine Mile station there were two Pole Creek stations on this section of the trail, the first one in the vicinity of Lodgepole. There was no evidence of the former pony express station when I stopped here at midday, but a Mother's Day notice and bearded half-naked nymphet (pole dancer?)outside a bar provided an interesting juxtaposition....

 

On arrival in Sunol I got talking with these colourful characters..

Gulf veteran Dean Soucie on the left cracked open a couple of beers and considered the meaning of life with me in his workshop home behind, and Randy Booth on the right let me camp on his smallholding which seemed to contain more clapped out cars than cattle.   I found a sheltered spot to pitch my tent though thankfully the predicted storm did not materialise.....

A couple of hours riding on Monday May 9th brought me to the location of the second Pole Creek station ...

...which was sited on the north bank of Lodgepole Creek, or to the left/south of the road in the photo.  The trail ran south of the creek to this point but then crossed to the north.  Burton gives a lurid description of the squalid 'hovel' which served as the station.  It was built of logs and sod up against the hillside, and incongruously papered with pages from journals such as Harpers magazine and the Illustrated New York News.  The fare consisted of antelope meat of dubious quality.

Happily the shop in Sydney where I stopped for a midday coffee stocked tuna sandwiches rather than rancid antelope, and I also found there was a convenient feed mill opposite.  Stacy who worked in the store there very kindly donated some sweet feed for the horses...

 ... and of course they attracted the usual small fan club, in this case Crystal with dad Nick.

Sydney did not exist at the time of the Pony Express, and developed around the military base of Fort Sydney which was established in 1867 to protect the transcontinental railroad from Indian attack.
It was the first sizeable town we had been through since Marysville, but Lady and Mo negotiated the narrow pedestrian tunnel through this underpass with aplomb..

Riding north on the actual line of the Pony Express trail at a location where it is thought that there

was a once a pony express station, about three miles south of Gurley on Rd 111. 

 It does not appear on official records but may have been called Midway? There must have been a way station somewhere on the twenty-five miles between Pole Creek and Mud Springs, and evidence has been found here of an old structure.   There is now an extensive military weapons storage facility to the west on the left hand side of the road.

 

Arriving in Gurley, I found a quiet grassy place to tether the horses by the house of Luke and Marsha (sorry I have forgotten the rather long German surname!) and their daughter Kindell, who was very excited to meet Lady and Mo.  Marsha was unfortunately not at all well after an operation, but Luke not only fed me but offered the use of shower and washing machine, and we set the world to rights with a beer while waiting for my clothes to dry.  As a former IT expert for the military he had travelled widely.  And I slept in their trailer which enabled me to make an early start the following morning.  No photos as my camera had run out of battery.