Up early to get M into hospital for her procedure. To Costco then waited at hospital until around 2. Home, then to bowling club to do draw for the weekend, stayed and started training of new novices.
M finally had some toast and tea and felt much better. Me too.

About a mile further on we had been told to turn towards the northwest where there was a stake set up.  This we did and found the trail to be poorly marked and hard to follow, and after a few miles we came to a slough and being so near sundown put off crossing until morning and camped for the night.  We could see toward the east a low chain of hills with two houses about a mile apart.  One of the houses had a tin roof and the rays of the setting sun were reflected on it.  We had seen no person on the trail all that day and the country had a deserted appearance.

This was our first night to camp out.  Bill attended the horses and Jack acted as cook and I milked the cows.  The neck yoke was placed upright under the wagon tongue and a canvas thrown across it which served for our sleeping quarters.  I think this camp was not far from where the town of  Manitou was afterwards located.

When we arose in the morning we discovered that our horses had disappeared.  This put us in quite a dilemma for it was hard to determine in which direction to go to seek them in this vast wilderness.  We decided that one would stay with in camp and one would skirmish around to the west and I went east toward the tin roofed house about two miles distant.  Here I found the horses tied to a fence.  The settler had been awakened during the night by them stamping around the house, so arose and tied them.  The cattle always remained near our camp and made no attempt to stray.

I hurried back to camp with the horses through great tall grass the rankest that I had ever seen anywhere.  The wind blew it in great bellows like on water and I could feel the horse on which I rode hesitate when an extra large wave approached.

On arrival in camp the horses were soon hitched to the wagon and driven down the steep bank and into the slough for about 20 feet and became stuck.  The team was then unhitched and the contents of the wagon carried across through the mud and then with the chains attached to the wagon tongue, the team pulled it onto dry land and our goods loaded again and we proceeded on our way.

I was now very useful on horseback, for I skirmished ahead to make sure that we were following the right trail, for tracks led off to bluffs of timber along the way and confused us for the trail was now becoming very indistinct.

The country along here had patches of willow and prairie and numerous soft places in the trail which made harder pulling for the team.

We then came to a settler’s shack but the occupant could not tell us anything about the road ahead.  This was the only house until we reached St. Leon where a French Canadian colony was being established.  There were two log houses here and a number of men were engaged in building a log building which they told us was intended for a store.

The road from St. Leon led us in a straight line up a long grade through poplar bush and the stumps in the road made rough travelling.  From the top of the hill the trail led a little toward the west on past Mr. Martin’s house and then down hill again to near a large pond where we camped for the night.

The next day we passed through similar country to that of yesterday and passed through the vicinity of where Somerset is now and on the Cypress River where we camped.  Charlie Holland’s house was a short distance from camp and was the third one we had seen that day.

When crossing the Cypress the next morning we became stuck in midstream and had to repeat the performance we had at the slough but did not have so far to carry our goods.

We were now entering the Tiger Hills range and this delay made it doubtful if we could cross them to the plain beyond by nightfall as I had surmised we could do, so we made all haste possible to accomplish this over an old poorly marked Indian cart trail that had become overgrown in many places with shrub and poplar trees six or eight feet high, which gave the team a hard pull in going through them.