Cody Mules Trek to Michigan

A team of Wyoming mules lent a hand halfway across the country.

The animals were on loan from the Shoshone National Forest, to assist the McCormick Wilderness in the Ottowa National Forest.

The area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan employs a ban on electric tools and motorized vehicles – so executing protection and restoration projects within the remote 17,000-acre tract can get tricky. Forest representatives say that in order to construct a small stretch of boardwalk that had become waterlogged thanks to beaver activity, they trucked in two teams of pack mules from the Shoshone National Forest in Cody, with help from The Nature Conservancy.

In total, 10 mules, four horses and four handlers made the two-day trek from Wyoming to the western U.P. for the project. The teams arrived on a Sunday last October and were put to work carrying eight-foot-long cedar planks and a variety of hand tools.

Photo by Jason Whalen/Fauna Creative, courtesy The Nature Conservancy