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There are still a lot of moving pieces at this point. Megan flies in bright and early to the Fresno airport, we have to get the camera charger and head off to Sonora, where we will do training, pack up for llama packing and charge up all our electronics as much as possible.
Megan's flight arrives at 9:30 am in Fresno, so no need to get up super early. In fact even with moving stuff into the car I was at the airport with plenty of time. Fresno is a small airport and so more pleasant than many; they have a sort of fake redwood forest in the main corridor. There is a monitor showing who is coming from the gates so you can sit off to the side and wait to get up when you see the person you're meeting come down the corridor. It took awhile for Megan to make her way from the flight, but we were soon off to the camera store.
We took in the camera to the store and after a bit of examination the clerk found a generic one-size-fits-most battery charger that would, indeed charge her camera's battery. While there, Megan wondered if having a case would be a good idea, so we ended up buying the charger, a case for her camera, and a case for my old telephoto zoom lens. It was then off to Sonora.
We arrived a bit too early to go straight to our room in Sonora, so we toured town by driving around a little while we waited. Sonora was hopping and traffic was heavy, so even though the town is small we managed to take some time. Coming back we parked at the Rodeway Inn across the street as directed and came in to see if our room was ready. We had to wait another 10-20 minutes or so but then could go upstairs to a corner room on the second floor. We had some time to plug in lots of things and start to reorganize a bit before we had to get to Potato Ranch.
Thankfully the GPS had a grasp on where we were going; Potato Ranch is kind of off an old segment of one road on a road that looks more like a driveway. We pulled in in front of a ranch style house with a couple of llamas standing outside. We met Greg and chatted a bit before moving out from the shade to learn what we needed in order to manage llama packing.
First lesson was getting the saddles on and off the llamas. Normally you'd brush the llamas off quickly first so nothing too annoying would be under the saddle. You then would put on a pad (if necessary) and the saddle. We learned that llamas don't kick very effectively to the rear but can clobber you pretty good between their front and rear legs. So when reaching under to get the belly straps, you wanted to be quick and not get your head too low. Greg's pack setup was far easier than one we had used some years ago in the San Juans--basically 6 straps, four with metal clips, two with plastic ones (Greg illustrates this in his instructional video albeit with a somewhat different saddle). We then examined the panniers, which would first have two small fabric straps looped over a sort of crossed-stick pommel at either end of the saddle. These straps had to be cinched tightly. When this was done for both panniers, you would take two wide fabric straps with plastic buckles and run them across the top, connecting one pannier to the other. These would be clipped and tightened so that the panniers were not on the llama's side but were instead supported on the saddle. Smaller straps could be run across to hold down items to be top-packed, but they couldn't be too tight. So we practiced first on Joe and then on Theo, two of the llamas going with us. The third was Sarek.
While we were doing this both Greg and I would go off-script a bit with stories and questions. Meanwhile, Megan was baking in the sun. We were shown the different ways the llamas could be tied up to graze as well as Greg's preference for how they should be tied up at night (basically, no clip should be on halter of the llama, but instead the two clips on the ends of the tether should be attached to a picket rope). We examined the special latch on the straps that would connect the llamas in line, a panic latch that would release when pulled on. We were told to never remove the short rope on the halter, to attach the llamas to the lead llama on the top ring on the halter but to attach the lines for grazing to the lower ring (to make it a bit harder for them to rub it off). We were probably told a few more things we never remembered...
My big concern was poisoning llamas. You don't have to search far to find stories about people, sometimes very experienced people, having their llamas get poisoned. Greg offered that he used to have a list of bad plants and pictures, but after a botanist took out some llamas with that information and ended up with a poisoned llama, he decided to figure out a better way. His approach was to limit llamas to areas where there were nice tufts of grass separated by dirt, so when you would look down you could see the soil between the grass clumps. (In practice this was often a bit spooky because there would almost always be something else you might find other than grass). He noted that the deer don't get sick because they can roam and simply move on if the plant they try is bad, but tethered llamas sometimes get more desperate. We also got instructed on using activated charcoal to help alleviate the worst of any poisoning. We heard that llamas usually start making coughing sounds and will sort of wave their heads and necks around early in poisoning because the plants are irritating their throats. If you ignore this enough, eventually you have a llama lying down and very weak; it is possible for the llama to die. If poisoned, we were to mix the charcoal with water to make a slurry and then force it down the llama's throat. Basically this provides a measure of illness--if you can't do it, things aren't too bad, but if they let you do it, it is probably needed.
That was cheerful news. Later on I found out that he had had something like five poisonings over the past 5 years, so not like this was a regular occurrence.
We had to discuss our logistics some too. We decided to get to Potato Ranch between 6 and 6:30 the following morning. Greg gave us the panniers to fill tonight; we were to get them within about a pound and have a weight of perhaps 25 pounds. Greg would take us to the trailhead and help us get going; we would next see him at Horseshoe Meadows sometime on 14 August, though he mentioned he would be there on the 13th. We could leave the car with him. Finally we were done, and we waved goodbye as we headed back down the drive. It was now 6 pm.
Standing in the heat had been no fun, but we had chores to do. The panniers needed to be packed, which meant we had to have the stuff going with us packed. A lot of stuff was in the car, so when we returned to the Sonora Inn, Megan went inside to get some of her stuff organized while I pulled most of the gear out of the car. There was a patio on the side of the Sonora Inn with a wall high enough to block the evening sun, so I collected everything there and started to work out some scheme for packing. We had a set of green panniers that seemed a good fit for the two bear boxes, then red panniers and finally white canvas panniers that Greg said were best suited for large bulky items. So sleeping bags headed into the white bags, food into the bear boxes and I started from there. The purchase of a bunch of stuff sacks now proved wise; instead of dozens of tiny things like batteries, towels, silverware, etc., we had a much smaller number of bags--a dark blue bag had towels and shower, a large yellow bag had the spare batteries and power adapters, the green bag had stove and cookware, a larger compression bag had my clothes and so on. Messing with the scale I finally got the three sets of bags within the acceptable range, though it now seemed some were heavier than I expected. I had gone back and forth on whether we would fit everything; at this point I thought we were in great shape and had room to spare.
Finished, I loaded the bags in the car and went to get Megan for dinner. She was tired and grumpy (the early morning flight plus standing in the sun responsible for most of that), so I went to dinner at a nearby Mexican place and brought her back take-out. But we were still not done, it seemed. Megan needed a swimsuit, gloves, a journal, and better sunglasses that could be found at Walmart. We also needed something for breakfast as we'd be heading out before the hotel's breakfast would be ready, so that took us by Safeway. By this point we both were pretty exhausted. Soon we were back in our room and trying to go to sleep.
Back to the prelims | On to Day 1
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