What a very nice ride at Lake Louisa today! We got up a little early to try to beat the heat, but still didn't manage to get out until 11:00 (we got so lazy hanging around in one place all winter! 🙂 Over the weekend I had taken the trail map and marked off two routes that would allow us to cover as many of the park trails as possible, and downloaded Day One into the GPS to make sure, which ran just under 9 miles, saving the longer 12+ mile one for later in the week. We headed south through the youth camp, down to Dude's Loop, then north for a bit to the link to the east side of the park, which let us cross over a creek where the dogs had a great time splashing around, even little Billy took a voluntary swim across the creek to cool off, even though there's a bridge! Went north over the Sandhill Loop, then came back over the bridge where we rested a few minutes at the picnic table and hitching rail there, then did a sort of figure 8 along a bunch more trails that ended up taking us to the loop around the north side of Bear Lake and south back into the campground, all told, just over 3 hours. The weather was pretty hot (in the mid-upper 80's) but not too humid, cloudy enough to keep it from getting too bad, there was a tiny breeze occasionally that helped, and at one point, a few drops came out of a cloud, just enough to subdue the increasing heat. Hubby had a lot of great canters, as his mare Clio was walking slower than usual, and he had to keep up. She's starting to get a bit of arthritis in one of her knees, so we'll have to keep an eye on that, though he's been spraying it with Absorbine everyday. But a gorgeous day all around! The trails were marked brilliantly, and the map corresponded perfectly (a rare combination!), and we never felt lost, making the day even more enjoyable! Looking forward to our next ride here, probably Wednesday. A great start to our re-kindled journey!
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