Coyote Meadow is in Tuolumne County, CA. Otherwise known as area D6 in the hunters circle. It turned
out that the weekend I picked for this campout was opening weekend for the rifle hunters. Being the stubborn
one I am, I was not going to let that disrupt my plans. We had absolutely NO issues all weekend.

Several of us arrived early to midday Thursday, to find several rigs driven in by hunters, either packed and gone,
or much to our delight, were packing there stuff on horses, that I am guessing had not had much done to them in a
while, as they put on a rodeo for us and threw gear from one end of the camp to the next. We didn’t even have
to buy tickets!!!

We picked out a very cool camping spot, and proceeded to make our horseshoe with three rigs, and our
community kitchen in between. Fire pit about 30 feet away. Our kitchen consisted of gas Bar B Q, dutch oven
table, stoves, and best of all, a Camp oven, which cooked some awesome chocolate chip cookies, ginger snaps,
corn bread, and biscuits. Do I dare mention the cinnamon rolls? They were the only calamity, but were still awesome
with frosting on them. Nothing wrong with a little charcoal running through our system. I could go farther into that story
about Kathleen needing fresh batteries for her smoke alarms at home. As that is her timer. But I won’t.

Thursday night was our, “Mexican” dinner night……. WOW!!! It was awesome.
You can see pictures below of the dishes we made.

Friday morning was chilly, five of us headed out on trails unknown to any of us. We had a great ride.
Met several hunters and packers along the way, all very friendly. One guy had lost a mule, so we were to
keep an eye out. We made it to a place called Whitesides meadow. Beings it was the day before opening day
of rifle season, We sat and watched several pack strings from nearby Packing outfits packing groups in and
going out empty. Pictures below. We got back to camp, unsaddled, sat to relax, and the rest of our group
showed up. Another ten people or so. Dinner was late that night, but well worth the wait.

Saturday morning came upon us and it was rather cold, down to freezing, we all had ice in anything that was
sitting out, but nothing that some nice strong hot coffee, eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy wouldn’t cure.

We Set out on the same trail as the day before with several different riders. We lost a few of them along the
way due to different issues, nothing my fault, HA HA!!!

Eight of us rode into Whitesides meadow again, we went to our lunch stop up in some rocks that
overlooked the meadow. As we sat and ate, we noticed a group of mules and a horse that were loose
in the meadow, that seemed to wander down the meadow a ways, stop at the creek, and head back to
a camp we couldn’t even see. This group of horses did this several times wandering farther each time.
Well about the time that we were bridling our horses back up to head out, the group of horses were coming
farther down the meadow towards us at a fast rate of speed… we couldn’t even be seen where we were at up
in the rocks.

We saw a guy standing out in the middle of the meadow watching his herd head out. Six out of eight of us
decided to help the guy out. We all mounted up, and came out of the woodwork. Chuck, Kathleen and Keith
cut them off from the West trail, Vern and Donna came through the middle, I saw them make a beeline for the trail
we had ridden in on, King and I cut them off at the pass, we all settled back and fanned out around them hanging
back, keeping them moving back towards this guy and his camp that was tucked way back in this valley. He gathered
all his herd, thanked us and we were on our way back to camp. As I reflect on that, It had to look pretty cool for a
group of riders to appear out of no where, round up your string and bring them back to you.

That night around the camp fire, was feast to remember, I even tried a triple chocolate Marshmallow cake in
my Dutch oven, that turned out awesome!!!

It was a great weekend of fun, meeting new people, great food, and some awesome country. I hope you enjoy
the pictures and my story. Oh I almost forgot…….. the lost mule…. He was found, and delivered to Kennedy
Meadows Pack Station. The owner was notified, and was headed up to pick him up.

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