After breakfast and Sunday shows, we headed out for our ride to the Hungryland Water Management Area just across the canal from my brother’s house. Having made this crossing the other day, Apollo was slightly less reluctant, but I still had to get down and lead him to the bottom of the ravine before I was able to climb back aboard and go up the other side, though this time he did it more readily, as did Clio. We headed west on the Old Indiantown Trail, avoiding a couple of ATV’s, a couple of pickup trucks, and passing two other women on horseback, who told us the trail we were on was four miles to the first highway, so an eight-mile round trip, which suited us just fine. Rather than go off the beaten track, we wanted to scope out the main trail and check out the terrain for future adventures. We did a lot of walking, some trots and a few long canters, as the road was pretty much straight the whole way, mostly a nice grass footing except the last quarter mile or so. Really nice trail, we often had water on both sides in addition to the canal we were paralleling, and we passed lots of birds along the way. We reached Pratt-Whitney Road in a little more than 1 ½ hours because we were taking a slow pace, then turned around and headed back. I thought there might be a perimeter trail from what I had seen on Google Earth, but it turned out to just be the easement along the side of the road, sorry to say. On our return, we passed an area that looked like it had just been dug up by some wild pigs, neither Hubby or I could remember it being that rough when we came through, and there were a few moments when the horses were snorting and had to be urged to go through a few sections, and we heard some rustling in the bushes, we figured probably pigs then, too. The horses made the canal crossing easily the next time across and we arrived back home about 3 hours after we left. I had promised my brother a short ride today, too, so we switched saddles on Clio, and my brother and I headed out around the neighborhood for about an hour. The horses needed some persuading to go back out the driveway, and they had the pokiest walk ever for most of the ride, until something spooked Apollo and he forgot to be pokey for awhile. Then, of course, they got less pokey when we headed in the direction of home : -). We were out about an hour, which was all my brother needed as he’s a bit out of riding shape and didn’t want to overdue it. After getting back we fed them a good and well-deserved bucket of feed, then settled in for the evening.
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