This picture shows what happened when I walked through a patch of wet mud. I was moving from right to left. At far right is fairly dry mud (whitish color) that offered little resistance to travel. This picture shows what happened when I walked from dry mud into moist mud. Here I was moving from right to left. At far right is fairly dry mud (whitish color) that offered little resistance to travel. As soon as the handcart's wheels came in contact with the shiny wet mud, they got coated with the gunk. As I continued walking, exerting ever greater effort to pull the cart behind me, the tires stopped turning and skidded through the remainder of the wet mud. It was difficult to maintain my footing, as the wet mud is extremely slippery.

Not all of the mud was like this, but there was enough of it to be a monumental annoyance. After the first attack of the wet mud, I made extensive detours to avoid other patches of the stuff, but it was a losing battle: the farther I went, the more frequent the wet patches. Every time the wheels got caked with mud, I had to spend about 15 minutes scraping the stuff off the tires.