With plans to leave tomorrow, and after having such a short ride yesterday, I was looking forward to a longer ride with Apollo today. He seemed much more willing, so evidently he had rested well, so after our usual Sunday blueberry pancake breakfast, I saddled up and headed out of camp. I decided to do the ride I had planned yesterday, now that I knew where the correct trailhead was. I kept Lola on a leash until we crossed the road our of the pasture area, and our first sight was a fairly long and rocky climb. Not too thrilled at that auspicious beginning, I was hoping things would improve, and thankfully, they did. In fact, today was the best ride here yet. Now that it had been dry a couple of days, many of the mud patches were greatly improved, so that footing was better. Trail #9 was my goal today, and it was overall much better than anything I had been on so far. There were still a few gravel spots, and a few mud spots, but there were also some wonderful fields where we could stretch out. Some areas were like a country lane, and some were more like a forest road, but there wasn’t anything like a single track trail, which is our preference. I managed to stay on track this time, there were actually a couple of extra confidence markers on this trail, so I was much more at ease. Apollo also seemed to enjoy himself a lot more today. He’s really been good this past month, he’s gotten so calm and mature, I haven’t had to worry about a thing! That’s always a good thing :-). I put him on his anchor yesterday, and he was surrounded by horses on highlines in the campsite next to us (the place was packed by Saturday morning), and he didn’t even give them a second glance! Anyway, I met a couple at a rest area who had been out all day and weren’t sure where they were, so I showed them on the map where we were, and they were surprised they had gotten so turned around. At that point, I had originally planned to veer west to Trail #5, but it had already been two hours, and I figured that I was only halfway, so I decided just to stay on Trail #9, which would be a slightly shorter route back to camp. So off we went, down more forest roads and country lanes, until we arrived back at camp. As I was crossing the barn area, I once again met up with the folks from the rest area, they evidently made it in pretty good time! I understood they were going to come back on Trail #9 in reverse of what I did, so I guess I was just about halfway when I met them! By the time I got back to our campsite, it was about 4:30, and the entire loop was empty except for us. It really emptied out in a hurry! I put Apollo up and did some preliminary packing in preparation for our trip tomorrow, and Hubby and I relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Okay, so I know that a lot of people really love this place, but frankly, I'm not getting to like it any better the longer I stay here. After a good night sleep and a good dialysis session for Hubby, I was saddled up and ready to go before 1:30. I had a plan mapped out, but once again, I couldn't determine exactly where the trailhead began. The trail map shows approximately where the trailheads start from the camp, but it's so small it doesn't really make sense, and the campground map has arrows pointing to the various trailheads, but don't mark WHICH trails they are the trailheads for! So once again, after struggling with Lola on a leash (they're very strict about leashes in camp, so even riding through requires a leash, which is very ungainly, and to my mind, pretty dangerous, but I understand that many dogs aren't as well trained as Lola, so I get it-don't like it, but get it!), we reached the riding barn, which according to the map, was the beginning of the trailhead I wanted. What it DIDN'T tell you is that the same trail numbers got out about 100 yards apart from each other, but you have to go all the way to the sign before you realize that, and since it had the same numbers on both signs, there's no way of knowing you're taking the wrong trailhead! So I once again headed down the trail in the wrong direction. Which is fine, I decided to take the trail backward. Until I got to the first intersection, where once again, there was confusion. According to the map, to take the loop I wanted to take, backward, I needed to make a left turn on trail 5. So when I reached an intersection that showed trail 5 going both left and right, I went left. Half a mile of struggling up and down muddy hills, passing another unmarked intersection and guessing which way to go there, I quickly realized I was headed straight back into camp! What the heck?? It turns out the first left wasn't really at the loop, I needed to turn right there, then make a left later! By now, Apollo had made it clear he was fed up with all the mud and gravel and was exhibiting distinct signs of exhaustion from yesterday, so I decided enough was enough, I wasn't going to torture us both any more. We headed back down the same boring county lane by the barn, where I hooked up Lola on a leash again, and headed through camp struggling with her. Hubby was surprised to see us back so early (me, too!), but it just wasn't worth the aggravation. Hopefully Apollo will be better rested tomorrow and we can take a longer ride, or I may just decide to take another short ride, hopefully by the lake, which I hope will be more interesting, though I assume it's a popular trail, which means the hundreds of horses traipsing it will likely have left it even muddier than the other trails I've been on. Sigh. I really wanted to like this place more, but it's not happening. I will say that if you have a gaited horse and want to ride 20+ miles a day, this is probably great for you. If you prefer buggies or wagons, there are plenty of trails for that, too. But for MY kind of riding, single track through the wilderness, this is definitely NOT my cup of tea! Got back after less than three miles, though it took us nearly 90 minutes, and spent the afternoon relaxing with Hubby, which was a nice change anyway. I can't WAIT until he has a horse and gets his back fixed so he can come with me! So it was a disappointing day, I'm sorry to say, considering this is the last weekend out for awhile, though we have a couple of horses we're going to try to take a look at next week, hopefully Hubby won't be horse-less for long, and naturally, I'm already starting to plan our next trip, as soon as possible! We love this life, even in a smaller-than-we-like trailer, it's still the way we want to live!!

Got up early to dialyze Hubby, and downloaded my plan for my ride this afternoon. Got everything wrapped up (including having to retrieve Dottie from the kennel at the main gate, she somehow managed to slip out of both her collar and the new harness I bought for her last week!. Such a slippery girl!), and was saddled up by 1:00. I had double-checked at the gate about dogs being on the trail, and evidently that's fine, as long as they're leashed in the campground, so Lola was able to come with us this time. I headed out the trailhead at the foot of our loop, and promptly missed the opening of the trail I had intended to take. By the time I realized the trail I was looking for didn't run into the trail I was on, I was too far along to turn back, so I kept going, revising my ride as I went. Unfortunately, the trail I was on was only a couple of miles long, and before I knew it, I was heading right back into camp. I looked at my GPS and reckoned that if I followed the utility line for a bit, it should take me to the back end of the original trail I had intended to take, and then I could do it in reverse. Turns out there are a LOT of trails out here that aren't on the trail map, and the one on the utility line quickly became a well traveled path that did, indeed, take me to the trail I wanted. I had no more trouble following the trails and map after that, though I'm a little surprised as how few trail markers they've put in, essentially only at the intersections, which are few and far between. No tree markers, not even a paint splotch occasionally to give one reassurance. If you miss a marker at an intersection, there's very little else to go on. I ended up doing a bit over eight miles, and I have to say, even though I love being on the back of my horse, this was a pretty boring ride. There was maybe a quarter of a mile of single track trails, all the rest were at least ATV width, some were full-on forest roads, and there was even a paved road or two that became part of the horse trail. Not my idea of interesting riding. There was a lot of deep mud made worse by the hundreds of horse hooves that had plowed through them, and there was a honeycomb of alternative trails in many places, all trying to avoid the muck. That didn't last very long, and was replaced by some heavily graveled areas (thank goodness I had put my horse boots on before leaving camp!), and a lot of roads that circled around fields. It felt like I was riding on someone's farm. Not my favorite kind of riding. I'm hoping tomorrow's ride will be a bit more interesting, with maybe some more single track, wooded trails, but I'm not holding my breath. After a beer and dinner, remarkably, after not having a cell signal all day, it suddenly popped into one bar of 4G if it was left sitting in a chair outside, enough to start up Netflix and watch a few more Longmires before the battery on my phone crapped out. That was it, bedtime!!

Well, the weather finally cleared up and warmed up a bit (though it's chillier than the last day I rode), so after getting Hubby dialyzed, I set out to explore the northern part of the park. On my last ride, I only got the southern part done, a little over five miles in that loop I made, but it was a great exploration because I learned that instead of just one giant loop, there's a lot of fields that you can cut across, and always eventually lead back to a single trail along the road that takes you back to the campground. Not to mention, being that we were both out of shape (Apollo and I), I didn't want to overdo it the first day out! But today, we were both ready to go longer, and since we got a pretty decent early start, we headed straight up along the trail that parallels the road, all the way to far north end of the park (which really isn't that far!), before the trail cut into the woods. This was one of the most interesting parts of the trail, actually, with some little grades and sharp turns, until we reached the trail that took us along the shoreline, where it became level again. There is really only two types of terrain here. You're either following a single track trail through the woods and weaving along each shoreline, or you're on the edge of a field, where they have done some nice mowing, with a wide track perfect for faster paces and side by side riding. It's a nice combination, but after a while, I found it got a little boring. We did see quite a bit of wildlife, though. Some beautiful white pelicans with black babies were gathering in the lake, we saw some kind of 4-legged critter which I didn't see clearly enough to figure out what it was, but it was the size of a large dog, but more round like a baby bear. Hard to say. At one point, a HUGE wild turkey flew up right after we passed it, and Apollo started to take off sideways. Fortunately, that meant he headed straight for a tree, and he had to stop and think about what to do next, at which point I had regained my balance and kept him standing still. Got a nice bruise on the inside of the my thigh from the saddle horn, as you would expect! Lots and lots of deer out here, really big deer. It seems they grow everything bigger up here! The turkey's seemed bigger than usual, too! Anyway, we kept following the trail, even down to the lake, where we tried to find another route up to the trail and couldn't, so we backtracked the way we came down and picked up where we left off. After about two hours, we stopped at a nice spot with a picnic table on a ridge, and I checked our time and GPS. I realized that if I continued to follow the entire length of the trail, it would be another two hours, which I thought would be a bit too much, so we headed on a more direct line to get us home in about an hour, which we did. Three hours is enough until we both get in better shape! Nevertheless, it was a fabulous ride, we had a wonderful time, it is SO GOOD to be back in the saddle again! Now we just have to get Hubby strong enough, and get him another horse, so we can go back to riding together! I do miss him on the trail, though I have to admit, it's nice to have a little time on my own once in a while. Being his nurse takes up a lot of time, and being solely responsible for his well-being, more so than ever before, does get a bit weighty, but we're settling down into a routine again, I just hope he can get strong enough for that routine to include him riding with me again!

Had a full night's sleep and woke up feeling absolutely great! Yaaaay! Got Hubby dialyzed pretty early, though I had to call the park office to see if they could change out the 30 amp breaker at this site. It kept tripping for no apparent reason, even when the load remained the same. They came by moments later to take a look, and said they would be back later in the afternoon to change it out. It was a beautiful warm day, but the forecasts had been saying sunny for days today, which of course turned out to be wrong, we had scattered showers all morning. But I was so determined to have a ride on Apollo, I didn't care if I had to get a bit wet. Fortunately, it had mostly cleared out by the time we finished dialyzing, so I went out and started getting Apollo ready. He gave me no trouble at all putting his boots on (he almost seemed glad about it!), and stood quietly while I saddled him up. Just about then, the rangers came back and started to repair the circuit breaker. I found that none of the batteries I had for my GPS were any good any more, but I saw a little mini-mart just outside the park entrance, so I took a quick ride over there and bought some. I finished getting Apollo ready, wearing my new Troxler helmet, and Lola dog and I headed out to the trailhead. What a nice ride! Though I thought there would be gravel on the trails, in fact, there was almost none. It was all dirt covered with layers of leaves, well-enough used so that it was easy to follow. I was also relieved to see that there was a lot more variety to the trails than the map indicated. It essentially showed one long, winding trail that followed the erratic shoreline, with a straight run down the road back to the camp at the end. In reality, the windy trail loops into the straight trail, which runs parallel to the road, many times along the way. You can circle each field and come back to the straight trail, take any number of cutoffs if you don't want to go all the way out to the shoreline, just lots of variety which made it more interesting. Though the park had delayed the trail openings from this weekend to next (due to the rain expected tonight and tomorrow), today they were just beautiful, mostly dry with just a few wet spots around the fields, but absolutely no big deal. I can see why they want to preserve the trails by holding off another weekend, but today, it was a gorgeous ride. Best of all, Apollo did brilliantly! This is his very first ride on his own, without his Mama (mine, too, without Roy! Well, except a few times on other people's horses), and he just did perfectly, totally responsive, seemingly happy just to be doing something besides eating and standing around. He never got excited, though he walked fast at first, as always, and I waited until he was good and warmed up before jogging and eventually even getting a little canter in. He's obviously as out of shape as I am, not having been ridden since last June, and he started to sweat and lather after the first few jogs, but I didn't overwork him (or me!) We stayed out about 90 minutes, doing almost five miles of the 9.2 miles of trails here, and I was surprisingly not the least bit sore, as I thought I might have been after so long. By the time we got back, the circuit breaker was fixed, Lola had thoroughly enjoyed her run (but she immediately found her ball and started tossing it at us to play, of course!), and Apollo seemed very pleased that he had had a break from his routine. I must say he seems to be much more settled since we got on the road, particularly since we've been at the park (he's not much for stalls), and he's relaxing back into his old self, which is great to see. I put him on an anchor so that he could munch on some of the new grass that was springing up nearby, and before long, Hubby and I were both enjoying a nice steak dinner, our first real solid food in days, before settling into the only really comfortable place in this little trailer, our bed! A few more Longmires on Netflix and lights out!

Woke up to a beautiful morning, fed the horses, and while I was waiting for them to finish their breakfast, played fetch with Lola as is our habit. After getting some amused looks from our neighbors across the road (Lola can be very entertaining to watch), I crossed the road for a chat and met, Max and Tracy and Callie, who's celebrating her 17th birthday today. We had a nice chat, and Callie took over throwing the ball to Lola for a while, until dirty looks from Apollo reminded me I had to take off his feed bag before he could eat his hay, so what are you standing over there for, Mom? As it turned out, Hubby didn't quite feel up to riding today, so I offered to take Callie along, since I didn't want to ride alone. She had never been on a horse in her life, though she had been planning on taking the ranch ride later this week, so it took a little extra instruction. After she helped me get the horses ready, we went through some basics, but I wasn't too worried, Clio is pretty much bomb-proof, at least usually. Of course, as we were walking past some corrals toward the trailhead, one of the horses kind of jumped towards us, and Clio stepped into a trot, then a bit sideways, not much, but just enough for a newby who forgot to hold onto the saddle horn as she had been instructed to lose her balance, and she did a slow motion fall onto the dirt and gravel road. She brushed herself off and immediately was ready to get back on, with just a scrape on her arm to show for it (more will come out later, I'm sure! 🙂 ). But she was actually glad it happened so early, it was the lesson she needed to learn how important balance is! We headed down the trail, around a field, then across the road to the REAL trails, which turned out to be a lot more challenging than I thought they would be, especially for a novice like Callie, but she had learned her lesson, and listened well to what I told her about going up and down hills, so we headed into the woods with confidence. The trails here are not very well marked, especially at the intersections, we got lost many times throughout the ride. I had made a GPS trail to follow, but there was one intersection (at least it looked like an intersection on the map) that we could never find, so we missed the trail we wanted several times. Our mistake actually turned out to be fortuitous, as it actually brought us past Loretta Lynn's actual residence, a beautiful, bucolic setting with a very modest house (for a star like Loretta!), guest house, barn, cows in the pasture, a really nice spot. Again, we couldn't find a trail marker, until we turned around and finally saw a sign across the road indicating a one-way horse trail. We headed down that, which followed along the river in the right direction, and finally came out at the end of the field where we had started. It was a great ride, beautiful country, though the trails were quite rocky (and naturally, one of Apollo's boot fell off and had to be re-installed), and even Clio's boot turned sideways at one point and needed to be fixed. There were some pretty good grades, which made it interesting, and Callie certainly learned a lot about balance today! No more falls, though, as she remembered to hang onto the horn! We were gone more about two hours, going just over 5 miles, just right for a determined novice, though I suggested she take some aspirin as a precaution tonight, as she was going to be sore! By now the hip where she landed hurt more than the arm scrape, as I suspected it would, but nevertheless, she was a trooper and was glad it happened as it did. She helped me rinse the horses down, and came over later to help me feed them as well, so I think she might be hooked! Hubby, bless his heart, had a cold beer waiting for me in our lounge chairs when I finished, and we sat and chatted with Cali for a while, until it was time for dinner when we all went our separate ways. She came back again, though, when it was time to feed the horses, and helped me with that as well. It's so refreshing to meet a millennial who is grateful and appreciative, and not afraid of work! Nice job, Mother Tracy!