Monday, Nov. 23, 2015 – Ride Day in Osceola National Forest

After another good night's sleep, the clouds went away, a cold front came in, with temps overnight in the mid-30's, brrr! The horses were very frisky, especially my Apollo, and unfortunately at one point he spooked and took off, and I almost managed to stay on the whole way, until the very end when I, as I was just regaining my balance, I tried to do a one-rein stop, which threw me off balance again and came down in a tumble, landing right on my tailbone, ouch! After a couple of minutes of recovery, I climbed back into the saddle and continued. I had selected the shortest loop I could find, just under 6 miles around what is marked on the map as "woodland road." Turned out, a lot of those roads were under water, and we spent a lot of time wading. Plus, there was a lot of overgrown trees that we had to fight our way through at a few points as well. I ended up changing the route a bit to get us out of the woods and back on a road, but that made the trip nearly 8 miles. Overall, it was a rather challenging day, I was bruised both front and back (the horn on my saddle beat up my stomach a bit), so Hubby was kind enough to put the horses away while I went inside and took some ibuprofen, find a comfortable position to sit in, and pack on some ice packs, followed by a heating pad, where I spent the rest of the evening until bedtime.