Many of my days are spent staring at a map and trying to plan adventures. Ive dragged my husband and son through the desert to rappel into a steep canyon in Escalante, spent some years driving unkempt rocky roads in the Lost Sierras, and more recently have found my new love combining horses and the outdoors a la horse packing into the wilderness. 
The thing about packing with horses most people fail to realize is that while the horse is doing a large portion of the grunt work carrying you and your gear, YOU are the one that has to take care of two large animals in an austere environment and that takes an enormous amount of planning. And horses really are constantly trying to die all the time. They spook at loud noises, have an inability to vomit if sudden changes in diet creates stomach upset (instead they just colic and die) and if given a choice will always go back to a place of comfort so containment in the wilderness is a major consideration. Add to that my 10 year old son would be joining me on horseback and my new to backpacking husband and my brother would be hiking in the route I had planned. So here we were, heading out on a 3 day 2 night packing trip into the Marble Mountain Wilderness 2 horses, 1 kid, 3 adults. 6 months of planning was about to become a reality.
Day one-everything was going off without a hitch. We had driven to the trailhead the night before, bags were packed, I was very much looking forward to eating my Luxefly Basecamp meals next to a beautiful lake. I got the horses tacked up and packed up, my son hoisted himself up onto his horse Chester, I was on my horse Selena, and the guys had backpacks on and were ready to go. This was our easier hike in, just 6 miles to the lake we were going to spend the first night. And oh it did go so well. We rode out (husband and brother hiking behind us) climbed through a beautiful forest, crossed a small stream with waterfall where we took a refreshing drink, my son oohing and aahing the entire time at the views. 
I was reassured that this was all worth the hard work and worry filled sleepless nights. Everything that first day was truly perfect. We swam in the crystal-clear lake, the horses were hobbled and grazing and not dying of colic, my brother taught my son how to fly fish, and we had this heavenly beautiful destination to ourselves. Evening rolled around and with perfect afternoon light and surprisingly NO BUGS we settled in and ate our dinners. I thoroughly enjoyed my Bahn Mi Noodle bowl (sriracha packet included, delish!) and my son who had previously been very averse to any kind of freeze-dried meal gobbled his Luxefly Cheeseburger Casserole. 
That evening I got the horses up on their highline (rope strung between two trees where the horses are tied) while the guys set up the tents. The sun was setting and we all settled in for the night. How lovely to drift off to the sound of contented horses and crickets…and my brother snoring loudly from his tent. Then 3am chaos struck. I awoke to the sound of my horse cantering away, Chester panicking as his friend left him behind. I groggily found my glasses, headlamp, and boots and ran out of the tent to find Selena halfway up a hill and Chester pacing in circles still attached to the highline. The grain I would normally use to tempt Selena back with was securely tied up in a bear bag. I should have trusted my prep and relationship I had built with my horse up to this point. As I started climbing up the hill to grab Selena she happily came back to me, the pull of being a herd animal heading back to safety. Once she was more securely tied back to the highline I fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning I was feeling better, I figured if one of my worst-case scenarios had already happened and resolved we were good to go. We all ate our breakfast, Luxefly brioche French toast for my son, wild mushroom biscuits and gravy for me, and packed up to go on our longer 11 mile day to the next destination. Not even half a mile up the trail another unforeseen event occurred when my horse stepped directly into a waspsnest. It all happened so fast. She started bucking and rearing and running back down the way we came. Later my son said she “went bonkers” which felt like an apt description as I somehow stayed in the saddle. In the kerfuffle my son turned his horse around and dismounted, was inadvertently kicked by my horse, and after everything died down and we escaped the wasps wrath, he showed us his big hoof shaped bruise on his leg. To make the trip a memorable enjoyable experience for my son, we as a group let him make the call about what to do next. 
His decision to turn back was the right one, as the only way forward was back through the wasps nest and no one wanted to do that again. And we all agreed that despite not everything going according to plan, the perfection of the day before was enough to override the unpleasant events of day 2. We rode and hiked the same beautiful trail we had come up on, camped again at the trailhead, and reminisced about the perfect first day and night in the backcountry. And you know what? Not everything went exactly according to plan and it was still an amazing trip.
I treated myself to the coconut tres leches cake I had so been looking forward to, and all was right with the world.