Though we had originally planned on riding today, it was so windy, we decided to wait until tomorrow to take a long ride. Spent the day reading and working on my new website, release date TBA soon!

After breakfast, we saddled up for a short exploratory ride. Hubby attempted to try out the modified bareback saddle that I bought some time ago, but we couldn’t get it to work well with the cinch he had, so rather than mess with it, he went back to his regular saddle, with plans to check it out again when we get to my brother’s for Christmas. We decided on the yellow trail, which basically was mostly a perimeter around a wide open field. There was a pretty blustery wind, and lots of wildlife smells around, so Apollo was up on his toes for almost the entire ride. Shortly into the ride, he shied dramatically, and I ended of falling out of the saddle, fortunately in slow motion, so I was able to protect myself from a hard fall, or from screwing up my already screwed up knee. No real damage, so I hopped back up again and we kept going. He remained on high alert, which made it a rather tense ride. We diverted onto the green trail, a very short trail of which we only took about half of it anyway, passed a couple of other riders, and then got back on the yellow trail. About the last half mile, Apollo finally seemed to settle down a bit, so I let Hubby take the lead, and we trotted nicely, then broke into a canter. All went well for about 8 or 10 strides, I thought everything would be fine, then suddenly Apollo put his head down and popped up for no apparent reason! Usually I can hang on, but perhaps because of my weak knee, I wasn’t able to stay straight, and ended up falling uncharacteristically on the off-side. This one wasn’t in slow motion, but somehow I managed to break my fall enough to not land too hard, thank goodness. I can’t understand why he’s doing this. I had taken off the heavy saddle bags, because Hubby thought maybe they might be slapping his rump too hard, so that wasn’t it. I was using the bitless bridle, and had completely given him his head, so that wasn’t it. I had put the extra pad under his saddle, so that wasn’t it. Either it’s something completely unrelated and I haven’t figured it out yet, or he just plain thinks it fun or funny for some reason. Not sure how to resolve it now, it’s getting unnerving that I can’t seem to find out what the problem is. If I felt a little more secure, I’d just take him out and run him for as long as I could make him run, but unfortunately, since he won’t leave mama Clio, we have to deal with that dynamic, which is hard because Clio walks slower than Apollo, but trots faster. Trotting is hard with my bad knee at the moment, though a jog would work, but Clio won’t stay in a slow jog, and once she passes us, all bets on Apollo’s behavior are off. Well, we’ll just have to keep trying until we figure it out! I thought by now, at age (almost) 18, he’d start to settle down, but as a mama’s boy, I guess he’ll never truly grow up! Got back to camp in just over an hour, and settled down for the rest of the day.

Another short drive today, so we got up at our usual time, but then something weird happened. When I stepped out of bed, I twisted my knee, and I ended up in pain and limping the whole day. Not sure what caused that, but it feels like something shifted, and it keeps locking, so I slathered it with Biofreeze, wrapped an ice pad around it, and hoped for the best. We stopped at the dump, then stopped at the gate looking for a place to pay. The office had been closed when we came in, and we expected someone to come by sometime during the week to collect, but no one ever did. The office was still closed, so I went knocking on the camp host’s trailer door, but he told me that they didn’t take money, that we were supposed to make reservations through the reservation system! Well, without an iron ranger or mailbox, or any other way of paying, we scratched our heads and drove off. What else could we do? Anyway, we made a quick stop at Walmart, and Hubby picked up gas, and then we headed out to Willis Creek. Here they had an open office, and for the first time in memory, the clerk even asked to see the horses’ Coggins! That hasn’t happened in a long time, but I consider it a good thing. There was one other non-equestrian camped at the horse camp, which was just a wide open area with a half a dozen gravel pads. The corrals here are open and grouped together on one side, with just a few small trees, not enough to provide any shade. It didn’t take long to get set up, and we settled down to our new back yard.

After a morning of getting caught up on business, we decided to knock out a bunch of the little meandering trails they have “inside” the Paradise Loop. Their maps are not very clear, even though they’re posted at every intersection, and we ended up missing one of them, but it was still a fabulous ride. Mostly it was through those lovely, crowded cedar tree tunnels (very spooky, but fun), with a couple of clear areas where we got in a few canters. Apollo on his best behaviour today, no leaping or jumping. I don’t know if it was because he got it all out of his system yesterday, or if it was because I didn’t put the saddle bags on him today, or because I added back one small extra cushion pad under his saddle, but I liked it! Think I’ll have to try out each thing one at a time to see if it makes a difference, and try to narrow down the cause of his rodeo-ing. Anyway, it was a great ride, and the weather finally warmed up to the upper sixties, with a nice warm southerly breeze, just what we had expected for Texas at this time of year, but haven’t really seen yet. Hopefully we’ve seen all the winter we’re going to get! (fingers crossed!) Did a little prep work for tomorrow’s departure, supposed to stay pretty warm all week, thank goodness. Next place will be a bit more primitive, but it’s only for 5 nights. Getting rather spoiled with water and electric so close. Love the Army Corp of Engineers here! They’ve done great job! No pix today, my video camera battery died!

Plotted a route that will essentially take us along the lake perimeter around most of the park, though what the map said and what my GPS plotted looked nothing like each other at the end of the day. After our usual Sunday breakfast of blueberry pancakes, we were headed out just after noon. What a great place this is for riding! Even though the “campground” is simply utilitarian, the trails are really super. The first half of the ride was more of winding through huge old trees, with an occasional short stretch of field, then along the western shore of the lake there are some wide open fields, perfect for trotting and cantering (and kicking up as well, which Apollo did more than his usual share of today!). Saw quite a few deer as well, several with quite a nice rack, as well as countless birds and other field critters. We took a break at the boat ramp, which has a nice floating dock where we had a snack, before heading back along the “Dusty Road,” which was tarmac about 30 years ago, but has mostly been reclaimed by nature, so it’s a pretty nice and straightforward run home. One last stretch of the beautiful and aptly named Paradise Trail before getting back to camp about 4:00. We passed a couple of bikers, and a jogger, and one couple just leaving on horseback near the bridge, and when we got back to camp, there were three other horse trailers just leaving. We certainly didn’t see them on the trail, but since we took the long trail, we evidently missed them all completely, not surprising considering how convoluted the trail system is here. A thoroughly enjoyable day! We got back before Hubby’s back started bothering him, so mission accomplished!

Woke up to more rainy, cloudy weather, and chilly temps that weren’t going to go much above 40, so we tucked in for the day, working on my soon to be released Equicamping website with the Army/Navy game in the background. Settled in for the evening as usual.

Rain moved in overnight, so we woke up to the sound of thunder and rain on our roof. Had a quiet day, which helped me finish the preliminary work on my new writing project, several days ahead of schedule.

After a great night sleep, (no nearby traffic and no trains! Though the airport is just across the lake, so we did hear a few early morning takeoffs), we had a leisurely morning, getting some work done, before deciding it was warm enough (around 46) to saddle up for a short ride, just to do some exploring. What a pleasant surprise! Once we crossed the field to the concrete bridge across what I assume is Reynolds Creek, we were enveloped into a forest of mostly cedar trees about 25-40 feet tall, and the trail started to weave through them, in many places almost like a tunnel. The footing was perfect, a medium packed dirt with only a few sections of rounded rock that seemed to be put in deliberately, and one or two areas that looked like it could get muddy with rain, though there’s been such a drought here in recent years, chances are it would soak right in anyway. We turned west and followed the creek, and though we didn’t see any blazes on the trail (which worried me at first), at every intersection it is very well-marked with both clearly painted wooden signs, and a You Are Here placard. We had no trouble staying on track with the trail map, though in reality, compared to the actual GPS trail, the map is significantly off. As long as you follow the trail map, though, you have no problems. Plus, it’s a pretty small area, and all trails on the west side eventually lead back to the bridge, so it’s pretty hard to get lost. We only went out for about an hour, less than 3 miles, just to stretch the horses’ legs and get us back in the saddle after 8 days. Apollo had energy, but not even close to the oat-driven madness he had earlier. This new feeding regime seems to be working, he’s calmer and Clio’s starting to put on some weight, really starting to look good again! We put their winter blankets on again, as it’s supposed to get below freezing overnight again. Had plenty of time to have a relaxing evening, having only taken an uncharacteristically short ride today! Looking forward to the next one, though, I sure wish the weather would warm up some, at least to their seasonal norms!

Got up just a bit earlier than usual, got packed up, headed out to the dump, which was in a separate campground, but they had given us the code for that when we first checked in, so no worries. Had stops at Tractor Supply, Walmart and Bar None for horse feed, finally arriving at camp at 3:00. No one was manning the booth, so we headed straight to the horse camp, thinking there was an iron ranger there, but there wasn’t. I guess someone will come around and collect at some point, or I’ll just run up and pay when the time comes. This isn’t much of a campground, more like a gravel parking lot with water and electric hookups at the end of each parking spot, and a fairly large field just to the south. The pavilion was empty, as all of the picnic tables had been moved out under the trees for some reason, and a very large fire ring with a concrete sitting circle around it, so obviously this is meant to be a group camp. One nice surprise, though, was that even though the picture on Google Earth shows open corrals at the back of each parking spot, they have since had a roof put along the entire row, so that both the corrals and the spaces in between are now under cover. Glad of that, as there’s some chilly rain in the forecast later in the week. Got settled in quickly, as there’s not much of a challenge to finding a satellite dish over an open field, and were soon home again, home again, jiggety jig!

Spent the day working on my project and doing some logistics for the next few weeks, with Hubby watching TV and reading his Kindle. Did a little prep work, but since the next horse camp is just 40 miles away, we’re not too worried about getting out at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Just another regular, non-riding, non-traveling day!