Archives for 2012

 Woke up to the alarm, had a nice breakfast, packed everything up, spent a few challenging moments getting out of our camping space, stopped and the RV and then went on our way! Stopped at Wauchula to shop a the Wal-mart and the Tractor Supply (for horse treats, of course!) Before arriving at Highlands Hammock State Park, apparently the oldest State Park in Florida. Technically, their horse camp is closed, because they’ve build a new one, but the new one isn’t open yet because the county won’t let them open it until they put in a new, second RV dump (they already have on the the main campground). Despite that, a friendly ranger named Steve agreed to let us come into the old horse camp for a few days. After checking in at the ranger station, we were directed through the main campground, north of the maintenance buildings. There was one rather scary stretch of road that we stopped to examine before venturing in, because it was pretty deep soft sand, and the last thing we wanted to do was get stuck. The ranger station’s advice was “don’t stop,” sage advice for anyone who’s ever dealt with suggar sand! Anyway, we made it through, though there were a couple of harrowing spots when the wheels started juddering, but we just kept moving and managed to make it okay There’s one fresh water spigot and a trough here, along with a number of high line posts in position. There was a day trailer here when we arrived, and we chatted with them a minute before they left. Didn’t take long to get everything set up and ready, so much earlier than usual we didn’t know what to do with ourselves! Happy to say I have a great cell phone signal here, so I did some work on the internet, then we settled down for the evening, using our generator for the first time in quite a while.

 Another quiet night for everyone, the horses seemed much more relaxed last night and this morning. Either the pigs went elsewhere or the horses are starting to get used to the smell! Either way they seemed more rested. After a leisurely breakfast and a few chores, we headed out on the trail around 1:00. Today, we just meandered a bit. We did a little exploring around the southwest part of the park, an area they call the Sundance Trails. As expected, the trail map wasn’t as accurate as I would like, so we just wandered somewhat, a bit on the blue trail, a bit on the white trail, a bit on one of the many silver trails, crossed the road to do part of the red mustang trail backwards from yesterday, then back to the southwest corner to go on what we missed. There a lots of long straight grassy trails so we did a lot of cantering today, as we continue to condition the horses and ourselves for longer and longer rides. We got back a little after three, and I spent the rest of the day playing around with Google Earth. I discovered I could overlay the map the ranger gave me on top of the Google Earth satellite map of the area and then roughly trace out the trails with actual lines the color of the depicted trail. Then I can readjust the trail from the rough map to the actual trail as I can see it on Google Earth. Pretty cool! Thinking about doing this for a bunch of maps I already have downloaded or scanned. I’ve been collecting quite a library over the years, and I may just add those to the new website I’m designing, which I’m going to put up as Equicamping.com in a few weeks. Stay tuned for more as we get closer to our launch date! Watched some football and TV for the rest of the evening, intermittently working on my maps. Rest day tomorrow!

While the night was restful for us, it wasn’t quite so restful for the horses. We noticed some signs of wild hogs or pigs along the side of the road coming in yesterday, and that was borne out by the fact that the horses seemed to be at attention when we went to bed last night, and were still hyper-alert this morning, though nowhere near as agitated as when we had hogs in the campground in Texas last winter. That, combined with two days off, and the fact that it was a lot cooler this morning meant the horses were quite frisky when we set out just after noon. The trail map we got from the ranger station yesterday is pathetic, though the trails are actually marked a bit better, they just don’t jibe with the map very well. Lots of intersections have numbered markers, but the numbers aren’t on the map, so that doesn’t help. The trails are marked by colored arrows, but the map is in black and white, so you have to decipher the gray dots on the map are the green trail, little diamonds on the map are the red trail, and so on. The first part of the trail was essentially open areas with lots of little palmetto palms, as if it had been cleared and never recovered. Eventually we went through a few areas of older growth forest. After several missteps, we finally found the crosswalk over the road to get to the Mustang Trail, which turned out to be very nice, with some of the best old growth forest we’d seen in a long time, but even that side had a few areas of “management,” code for clearing out the old growth trees and replacing it with pines, likely for eventual harvest.  We even crossed a water hazard, our first in weeks! Okay, so it was just a trickle of a creek, but at least it was running water!  Did the entire Green Trail (parts of it twice) and the Red Trail in just under three hours, and found lots of places to trot and canter, in fact did some of the longest canters we’ve ever done. It’s a pretty small park, so it was hard to get too lost. The horses started out jittery, but finally settled down after a few of the canters, though they got a little on edge on the final leg back to the camping area, where the telltale signs of wild pigs grew more noticeable. They’re absolutely getting in better shape though, as are we. It feels so good to be getting back to riding more regularly, we’ve been so busy since the summer it feels like we’ve gotten off track! Got back to the campground and discovered that all four of our neighbors had moved out, but knew they’d be filled in again by the evening, though whether any of the were bringing horses was unknown. Got the horses settled in just about the time people started showing up. We discovered that we could easily reach the electrical outlet of the site next to us, so we decided to plug in, then ask later when someone arrived if they’d mind. Eventually they showed up, and after a nice chat, they said they didn’t mind, so we’re set with electric for the weekend (albeit by a bit of pirating.) Call it being resourceful…: -) Anyway, we had a quiet evening and we’re looking forward to good sleeping weather, temps down to 40 tonight!

Didn’t bother with the alarm this morning since we had such a short trip today, got out about noon after using the dump here at Alafia. After stops at the Post Office and Wal-mart on the way, we arrived at Little Manatee River State Park, less than 25 miles away from where we started. The ranger at the entrance seemed rather surprised that we were even aware that they had four extra primitive horse camp sites, apparently they’re brand new and haven’t even been put on their computer yet. Nevertheless, she made a call and managed to make the arrangements after I explained that I had called and spoke to someone who told me they had these spots. Before long we were on our way to the equestrian camp. They have four sites that are reservable through ReserveAmerica, but they were all booked for the weekend, so we opted for the first-come, first-served sites, figuring coming in on a Thursday would improve our chances. We arrived to discover that all four “reserved” campsites were full, but not one of them had a horse. Apparently they use this area for overflow when the regular campground is full. Fair enough, except that the four new spots were really crude and incomplete. They had put big gravel down, and hadn’t really cleared anyplace for the horses to go, although they do have covered stalls behind the reservable sites, not within view of the primitive sites, though. We did find a grassy area between the reservable sites and the trailhead, however, that had tall pines in the right position to highline, and enough room for us to park both vehicles and create a nice little alcove for ourselves. There is also a very convenient spigot right here as well. We were set up, satellite dish and all, well before 4:00, so we had a relaxing evening. Funny, we had stayed here once before years ago at the regular campground, and when we drove in, I saw the sign for horse camping. I actually think that we saw that same sign back then, and that was when we first became aware that people actually camped with their horses, planting a seed that would eventually grow into what we are doing today! Sort of feels like we’ve gone full circle on that one! Looking forward to our first ride tomorrow!

After a leisurely morning, we saddled up and headed out on the trail just after noon, starting out counterclockwise on the Blue Perimeter trail. The ranger had told me it was about 7 miles around this rather small park, but there were numerous other trails crisscrossing it as well, so we had options. Leaving the campground out the southeast corner, we started down a lovely wide trail with a row of trees reminiscent of a country lane. That quickly turned into a section of old growth forest, and some lakes and ponds, including a couple of spots of water crossing the trail, that was the first water we’ve seen in ages! Before long we came upon some wide open fields, but the footing was mostly a grass swath, so it was perfect for trotting and cantering. Despite the long ride on Saturday, the horses seem quite up to it, and we did a lot of trotting and cantering! Eventually we arrived at the day parking trailhead, and judging from the kiosk map and the terrain, we decided that staying on the perimeter trail, which basically just followed the road, would be too boring, so we cut across the park on the green trail, then headed south on the white trail to the picnic area, then cut across the green trail back to the perimeter trail that headed us back into camp. It was a lovely ride, and except for a couple of run-ins with a couple of sets of bikers on the equestrian trails (one couple was apologetic, the other two girls were rather indignant that I made them stop and walk past us, rather than blow past us as they were intending to do… One even got snippety when I pointed out that there were many bike trails in the park and they didn’t need to be on the equestrian trail, though I got the feeling that they were so busy chatting that they didn’t even notice they were on the wrong trail… We had heard their voices for quite a while before they ran into us.) Other than that, we had a great time, out till about 3:00, rinsed the sweat off the horses, walked the dogs, had our ice cream lunch, confirmed a job in May in western New York, and settled down for the night.

Had a good night sleep, woke up with the alarm, and several snooze buttons later, finally crawled out of bed. Had breakfast here since it’s only about a two hour drive. Packed up and moving by 11:00, a straightforward drive down I-75 with just a couple of misdirections, thanks to my Verizon GPS, which hasn’t been working very well since their workers went on strike a few months ago, though I’m sure there’s no linkage there… Received a hearty welcome from the ranger at the main gate, and was all settled in, including satellite signal, by just after 3:00. Here there are two campgrounds next to each other, a regular one and the horse camp next to it, with 11 sites designed for horses. There are posts for highlines scattered around, and they’re in the process of building a barn nearby, so obviously they have an active horse community here. Looking forward to seeing what the trails look like. Went out to dinner at the Outback in nearby Lithia with an old high school friend and his wife, had a great conversation until 9:00, before heading back to camp. Looking forward to our first ride here tomorrow, feel they must be pretty good to be such an attraction! Fingers crossed!

     Set the alarm to get up a bit earlier, had breakfast and then finally headed out about 11:15 toward the Land Bridge over I-75. Cornelius our campground host had said it was about five hours, so we figured we were in good shape. We took the buggy route because we thought it would be more direct, but missed a turn somewhere and ended up on a dirt road that was obviously on the Ross Prairie Wilderness, which was south of the Greenway. Since it was heading east, in the direction we wanted anyway, we stuck with it for awhile, until we found an unmarked trail heading due north. That soon took us back to the buggy trail, which we followed to the road crossing at Route 484, doing a lot of trotting along this section to condition both ourselves and the horses. From there we stayed on Yellow Trail number 1 across the entire next section of the Greenway, from 484 to 49th Street. It was a nice trail, though the scenery wasn’t nearly as nice as the first section, it was still pretty good. It took us longer to cross than we thought, and we got behind schedule. We eventually got to an underpass at 49th, and kept going, still following the Yellow trail, mostly walking now, as the horses had gotten more tired than we had anticipated, guess we pushed them too hard too early. We finally reached the Land Bridge, where, thank goodness, they had a couple of hitching posts and a trough of water for the horses. We crossed over to the other side, just so we could say we did, and then came right back again, stopping at the trough to rest and have some lunch. Gave the horses some oats and feed, which helped their energy a bit, and headed out again about 25 minutes later. They were still reluctant to do more than a walk, however, so it was a long ride home. We took the main Greenway Road because we figured it would be the most direct route, plus the footing was a bit firmer, mostly old asphalt with a few patches of gravel, not our favorite, but the trails here are pretty deep sand, particularly in the second and third sections of the trail, and the buggy section of the first section, which is one of the reasons the horses got worn out so early. We managed to get to the road crossing at 484 just before the sun went down, but the rest of the trip was in the gradually darkening skies of civil twilight, which was really lovely going through our favorite part of the forest, though as it was getting dark it was a bit spooky at time, though the horse were too tired to care. Fortunately, the skies were clear and there was an almost full moon brightly lighting the sky. I just put Apollo on auto pilot and let him take us the rest of the way, almost. I made him turn in one spot to stay out in the open rather go into the now quite dark forest, and that messed us up a bit, but soon we crossed the right field, and from there, Apollo led us straight to the gate at the campground, though honestly, I was having a hard time seeing it until we were practically on top of it. Good horse! He got us home safe and sound. We quickly stripped off their gear, checked them out to make sure everyone was okay after their exertions, gave them extra rations of feed before hanging them back up on the highline, took the dogs for a walk and collapsed into our recliners with a bowl of ice cream after having spent almost SEVEN HOURS in the saddle! What an adventure! Before going to bed I looked out at the door, and Apollo was laying on the ground sound asleep with mama Clio watching over him, just like she always does for her sweet colt. Tomorrow no alarms, we sleep as late as we want and do our best to rest as much as we can, though there are some chores that just have to be done. What a memorable ride!