//------------------------------//
// Day 43 
// Story: The Winding Northward Road 
// by Rambling Writer 
//------------------------------//

Well, the bad feeling’s still here, but it hasn’t gotten any worse.  I’ll risk it and stay the course.

Those gray splotches?  Ruins.  In a bit better shape than the ones I saw in the Macintosh Hills.  They’re part of a large… complex, I think the word is.  Mostly houses, but also some other buildings I can’t identify.  There’s one set of buildings that’s still relatively intact, barring a few holes in the wall.  They look like some kind of fronteir frontier fort.  Outer wall’s made of stone, not wood, although I suppose there aren’t a lot of trees out here.  Maybe there’s a quarry nearby.

Got to the ruins about an hour before sundown (which came earlier than I expected, since the mountains block out some of the western horizon).  Decided to camp out here tonight for the extra shelter.  With some time to kill, I poked around, trying to see if there was anything I could find about this place.  Came up with nada.  Everything’s been taken.  Guess they abandoned this place for whatever reason.  Tried to look it up on the map, didn’t see anything.  In fact, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of anything in this area, which wouldn’t be that glaring if there wasn’t a whole lot of somethings scattered around it.  It’s like there’s something here ponies don’t like.

Still planning on heading forward, still can’t shake the feeling I’m doing something stupid.  On the one hoof, there’s that bad feeling, these ruins, and the blank spots on the map.  But on the other, it can’t be THAT bad, can it?  Didn’t hear any warnings about it or anything.  It’s not like there’s a permanent stormcloud or perpetual darkness hanging over the area.  Maybe there just isn’t anything out here to bring ponies out; the town was a boom town for, I dunno, gold or gems or something, then there turned out to not be anything, and it was abandoned.  And even with the bad feeling, I’m hardly an experienced hiker that could notice things to give me that feeling.

Can’t hurt to get out of here ASAP, though.  There’s a low pass between two peaks right near me.  I’ll aim for that.

Getting more and more south.  The wind’s slowly getting warmer.

Am I this
Getting bad feelings.
Am I stupid?  Probably;
I keep forging on.