Archives for September 2019

Decided to finish off the few trails I had missed while we were here, so got out fairly early, since I have a lot of work to do getting ready to travel tomorrow. I saddled up Flash and away we went, taking the park road straight out to the yellow Oak Grove Trail, which I had taken before but my GPS didn't work right so I didn't get to map it. I didn't do the worst part of it (couldn't actually find the bad part coming in the other direction!), so that made it easier. Went left on Lakeside until we got around to the entrance to the White loop, which turned out to be a much more challenging trail than I had anticipated. Several downed trees made for some difficult detours, but not for long and not too bad. I had the impression that the White trail would go up to the top of the hill on the other side of the lake, but the loop went one way about halfway up the hill, then when up about another 100 feet and came back the same way. Passed what I guess is an old homestead before coming back down to the Lakeside trail. Picked up the purple trail from there, and took that pretty much all the way back to camp. A nice ride, and a great way to finish our stay here. I've actually ridden more here than at any other place, and enjoyed every minute of it! Spent the rest of the day putting stuff away, including the screen room, put the horses back on their highline and took down their portable corral (I'd been sort of letting them graze all around the camp for the last few days when no one else is around, so the grass could recover in the paddock I had made), and finally settled down for the evening, looking forward to a new back yard tomorrow!

Hubby felt good today, so I saddled up both horses and we headed out down the Hillside trail to Lakeside. I figured that one was probably the only one that wasn't too much for him to handle, even though it was a bit longer than he had previously managed. I hoped that the flatter grade wouldn't overtax him, and he did very well! He was still in good shape by the time we got back to camp, and his dialysis went great, so once again, it was an overall fabulous day!

Another beautiful day here, and with no dialysis today, I planned a nice ride on Flash on the Logan trail. It had been closed down last week apparently, and the local Horse Council Club came out over the weekend and cleared it of a lot of fallen trees, as also did some mowing in areas that were way overgrown. So Flash and I headed down Hillside Trail to Trillium, which was a very nice trail. Then I decided to knock off a small red trail that turned out to be quite rugged, with some steep climbs and drop-offs, quite narrow and a little treacherous in places, but nothing an experienced horse and rider couldn't handle. It was a fairly short loop and soon brought us back to the Trillium trail, which then led us into the former horse camp area, which is now a very nice pavilion (with a good cell phone signal!) I did a couple of texts while I was there, then we headed out on the Logan Trail on the other end of the picnic area. It was clear that this trail did need a lot of maintenance, there were a lot of trees that had come down, many a long time ago and a good number more recent. Some parts of the trail had really been torn up by the four-wheeler (or tractor, not sure what they had, but it looked like it might have gotten stuck a few times), so there was some deep mud in a few spots. By now, Flash was good and warmed up, and as his wont, he started trying to go faster and faster. I let him go whenever the terrain allowed, and I'm happy to say he's starting to make better trail decisions, choosing to slow down on downhill grades and muddy sections, speeding up on uphill grades and flat ground, though there were a few knee-knockers that almost caught me once in awhile. We made short work of it, doing 8.15 miles in barely two hours, no hanging about with this one! This Flash horse really does love to go! He's making me a better horsewoman, that's for sure. We're starting to jump over logs and holes and such, which certainly is making every ride interesting! Got back by 1:00, and once everyone was put away, we got ready to go out shopping. Just after I left this morning, two trailers came in and parked next to us, so now we have neighbors again. One of them asked me to pick up something at the store, which I was happy to do, and we headed out of camp for Steubenville, stopping at the Post Office to see if my final package had come. It hadn't. Our first stop was a nice little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the mall called LeVille, where Hubby was delighted to have a big fish and chips dinner and I had a nice shrimp and vegetable pasta dish, with lots of leftovers of both. Lola came in with us and immediately lay down under the booth, her usual place when it's too hot to leave her in the truck. Of course, she has her Therapy Dog Please Pet Me vest on, so no one ever minds. Then we went into Walmart and did our shopping, and a quick stop at Rural King where I found another tire inflator that claims to go to 150 psi (we'll see!), then back to camp. Another quiet evening after that! Loving it!

Such a beautiful morning I just had to go for a ride, and decided to take Apollo since he hasn't been getting as much exercise lately. We took the Hillside trail straight down, then looped around the Lakeside trail in reverse of what I had done with Flash last time. I wanted to get a GPS trail, since for some reason I never got one on my last two rides. I finally discovered that somehow my GPS locator had been turned off! I seem to recall I had an app ask to be allowed to use my location finder and I said no, but I didn't think it would mean to not let ANY app to use it, which apparently did! Oh, well, I didn't make that discovery until almost the end of my ride today, so once again, I didn't get a good GPS map of the Lakeside trail. I'm hoping Hubby will feel well enough one day to do this trail with me, as it's only a little over three miles long and not too rugged, so I'm thinking it will be okay for him. Apollo seemed to enjoy himself as well, though it was a bit mucky in spots and he didn't much like that. Just enough exercise for him with all the ups and downs. Got back in plenty of time, but then had some problems with Hubby's dialysis Ipad, apparently somebody has accidentally unenrolled us from our current clinic, so I had to spend an hour chasing that problem down, only to end up having to revert back to a paper report while everyone tried to track down what happen and sort it out. Not much fun, but we got on with it, just another obstacle to overcome! I'm hoping the solution will be one that will be permanent, the one systemic challenge we have yet to overcome is allowing us to keep one Ipad no matter what clinic we're enrolled in. It's hurdle everyone's aware of, but has yet to be addressed, hopefully this will be the pivot point to solve the issue! Settled down in the evening to old recordings on the Dish, as again, not much of a signal here.