Hey Darlin’!
I went to bed last night convinced it would be too rainy today to ride today, and by the time I woke up, the whole forecast had changed to almost NO rain, cloudy in the morning and clearing in the afternoon! Evidently the front moved through faster than they expected (are they EVER right these days?), so after chores and breakfast I saddled up Flash and we headed out just before noon. Since there were still a couple of trails way out on the eastern side of the forest I hadn’t done yet, I decided to take the opportunity to do so. We weren’t out 15 minutes before the sun started coming out, and it turned into a glorious day! Of course, some of the trails were quite muddy, as I expected, but we managed to keep his boots on until we hit one very mucky spot way out on the orange trail, and I knew that most of the rest of the trail was just dirt, so I took them off for awhile. We rode all the way into the valley to Twin Falls, and I thought the map showed that the trail kept going, so Flash and I started up a very steep hill before I realized there was no trail there, so we had to come down, very slowly, switch-backing every two steps to keep from sliding down the hill. Then we went back and rode into Chapel Cave, which was pretty cool, both literally and figuratively, then came all the way up the orange trail until we got to Airplane Rock, where I stopped to rest him for a bit. There were two girls and a guy there when I stopped, and we got to talking, and would you believe it? The guy used to be a counselor at Skymont Boy Scout Reservation under old Harvey Raper!! I told him how Harvey was the first person we became friends with when we moved there, and we got to chatting about that for awhile. What a small world! Well, they moved on, and we rested for a bit before heading back. I put his boots on again as we started getting to the gravel parts, and we managed to keep them on almost all the way home, losing one on the very last really deep muddy spot on the last hill home. Before we got that far, though, I met a couple of guys, Dane and Jeff, who were camping up here. Both recently retired and tempted to do what I’m doing, but I don’t think they have the partners for it. Anyway, we chatted for quite a while before I finally started back to camp. The whole ride was over 14 miles, but it was over 5 hours in the saddle with all the stops, but a thoroughly enjoyable day! I rinsed Flash down and put him away, and started getting dinner ready, since I had completely missed lunch! Had a nice fat pork chop on the grill, one of the ones I was given at Tippecanoe by a camp neighbor, it was practically an inch thick! Delicious! Then I filled up with water since I have laundry to do tomorrow, and I was down on the final red light, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t run out tonight while taking my shower. After dinner, I walked up to the guys’ camp, we had been talking about Brown County, and I had a trail map from there so I took it up to them. We got to chatting again, really nice guys from my era, I did my Snowy River for them and they seemed to be duly impressed. We might ride together tomorrow. I usually don’t ride on the day I pack up, but I really would like to take Apollo for one last ride (he was literally pouting with his back to me after we got back to camp and I was letting Flash eat clover!), and I still would like to try to do that one final loop down at Buckskin Canyon, now that I’ve seen the map more closely I think I can make it okay. That would mean I would then have mapped every single trail out here! And it’s supposed to be a gorgeous day tomorrow, with lots of sunshine and cooler temps, down in the 50’s tonight, yay! I figure it only takes me about two hours to break down, I should have plenty of time to do that, and I can still spread it out through the afternoon and evening. I do have to move my hay from the truck into the trailer, but these bales are so light I won’t have a problem, and I’m down to my last bale in the trailer anyway. Well, enough pontificating, time for shower and bed! Good night, my sweet! Love you!
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