D, rest and look around first

We’re getting some desperately needed rain. Aside from feeding critters I’ll be indoors.

@Rodney Thompson Outdoor Skills I've lived here 20 years now and 2024-2025 has been the driest I can remember except for one year more than a decade ago when farmers were having to haul water to their ponds for the cows. It's been extremely dry, and even the rain we got won't go far. But I think that system is heading your way now. Hopefully you'll get some too. My sister in law lives in Corpus Christy TX and that entire city is at critical levels on their water reservoir. Not sure what they'll do if it goes any lower - bad outlook for all of the refineries in that area, even if that was all they had to worry about.

B. Took a bushwacked shortcut with my son that turned out to be a really LONG cut.

@Rodney Thompson Outdoor Skills @Evelene Sterling we were out retrieving my runaway horses and could actually see the roof of our house from the point of deviation, which was were we found the horses at a hunting cabin on the next mountain over. The way there takes a couple of hours on a logging road that goes up behind our house and over the ridgetops to the east. But son, who was 13 at the time said "look, our house is 'right there'. wouldn't a straight line be better?" So, I said, okay, let's just aim straight for it. Welllll. There is no such thing as a straight line from point A to point B here. It took us FOREVER to find ways down bluffs, through ravines, over downed trees, etc. Once off that ridge, our house was no longer in sight, either. It would have been quicker to go over the ridge and around, the same way we'd gone in, lol.

You got me!

At least out here if I were to get lost, all of our hollers usually end up draining into a creek. The small creek will drain into one of the larger creeks, and those drain into either the Buffalo River or Kings River. There are usually dirt roads that run adjacent to the larger creeks. So it might take a long time to get there, but eventually I'd find a dirt road to follow downstream until encountering a house that looked relatively safe to knock on a door to use a phone, or keep walking to reach pavement sooner or later. Some of the backwoods homesteads may not be wise stops, though, lol. My biggest issue would be whether or not I had water on me for drinking, but in the worse case scenario it shouldn't take 3 days to find some sort of signs of civilization. Which I realize is not the case out west.