Today is the big day! Everything that Flash and I have been working towards for the last two months, it's finally here!! Got up bright and early, had a quick breakfast, then Hubby and I drove out to Dupuis WMA where the ride begins, arriving just after 8:00 as I had planned. Got Flash all saddled up and ready to go, then waited for the 8:30 riders meeting. That time came and went, then I heard it would be 8:45. At 8:50, still nothing. I knew that I was already pushing my luck with a 9:00 departure, so I found a woman who was marking up a map for someone, and explained that I needed to leave right at nine, so she gave me a copy of two separate maps, one of Dupuis and one of JW Corbett, and briefly (and rather vaguely, I thought) ran through the trails with me. In the end, she just said, "Follow the teal trail to the south end of the park," and the rest would be self-explanatory. So right at 9:00, I headed down the main road until I hit the teal trail, then followed that until it came to a dead end. Great. Nothing on the map helped me figure out where I was. I changed directions a couple of times before finally picking up a red trail that I thought was going in the right direction, but that looped back on itself. I ended up going cross country to the east, because I knew the teal trail did cross the entire length somewhere, and I was bound to pick it up. Finally, I did, but by then I'd lost almost an hour and added several miles to an already longer than expected journey. I pushed Flash hard to the south end of the park, where I met up with a couple of other organizers who were supposed to be marking the trail ahead, but apparently they left 20 minutes after everyone else did. Despite their late departure, they were still the first to arrive at the south end of the park that leads to the trail to Corbett, so evidently, I wasn't the only one who gotten lost. Grrrr! It won't matter Saturday or Sunday, but today it was critical to make Hubby's dialysis time. I headed out the trail toward Corbett, now well in the lead, and kept pushing Flash as much as I could to make up for lost time. Now there was only one trail to follow for a long time, so that made it easier. There was one water stop, but there was a cable strung between two posts we had to step over to get to it (no one had a way to remove the lock) Flash walked up on it, then backed away panicky when he struck it. I suggested to the women at the checkpoint that they put a plastic bag or something on it so that people and horses could see it, surprised that no one had already thought to make it somehow. From there it was up one canal and down another, missing another turn because of poor directions (I was told a certain number of electrical poles, but that turned out to be wrong.) I finally saw some pink ribbons, which I had seen along some of the way, and finally figured out that they must be the trail markings for the ride. Would have been nice is someone had mentioned that to me before I left this morning! Still managed to be completely lost in Corbett, again because the trail markers were not good, but fortunately, I managed to stay on trails that, according to the map, would take me to I camp. Many of the trails were under water, so we were wading a lot (thank goodness I had schooled Flash on these earlier this month!) And FINALLY arrived in camp after 2:00. I practically threw Flash in the back of the trailer after I unsaddled him, jumped into the truck, and went as fast as the crappy, pothole-ridden dirt road would let me. It was 3:00 by the time we emerged from Corbett and it's dead cell zone and called the center to let them know we would be late, ran home, dropped off Flash, jumped in the car and finally made it to Hubby's dialysis center at 4:00, an hour late, but they were very gracious about it, thank heavens. Of course, that made it a very long evening, not arriving home until 9:30, and barely had time to grab a bit and crash into bed, with the alarm set for another early morning tomorrow! Whew!
