Whew! What a day! I started off with great intentions to go riding this morning, got dressed in riding gear right off the bat, then heard thunder in the distance, darn it! The next few hours was very frustrating. The sun would come out and I'd be just about ready to start saddling Flash, then there would be MORE thunder in the distance. It happened three or four times before the radar finally showed the storms were no longer training in one place, and had finally cleared through. I finally saddled Flash and left camp around 11:45, heading up the gravel road on the west side of the camp. We followed the signs pointing to the trails until they split, then took the farthest west one. While I had a map, it wasn't too clear, and wasn't an exact match to what was on the ground, as is so often the case. We eventually followed the signs to the Double Arches, which is one of the good linear destination trails that I found, but not very far in, it started getting really steep, really narrow, and finally, we hit a couple of huge, steep rocks, and Flash slipped on them and fell on his shoulder on one of the rocks. I managed to grab a handful of mane and hung on while he righted himself, but he only did that by turning around and climbing back above the rock he had just slid on. I decided it was too treacherous, certainly for so early in the ride, and the rock was really slippery with all the rain and mud that had washed down, so we uncharacteristically headed back up the trail. We turned down another trail, and that got a bit dicey in spots, too, but we managed to make a small loop out of it, that brought us right back to the gravel road that led back to camp. We had only been out about 40 minutes, so I knew that wasn't enough, Flash was barely warmed up, and still prancing around, like I expected he would, since he's been off for more than two months. I came back through camp and picked up the "new" trail that left on the east side, and that was actually quite nice. Slippery because of all the rain, but mostly dirt, none of these big slippery rocks, and not too steep most of the time. That took us out to a logging road and an overlook, then I decided to take the Panther Creek loop, which had been part of my original plan that I had abandoned early, only going in the opposite direction. That wasn't too bad, though there were still a few sections that were quite challenging, and would have been even on a dry day! The big rocks here have been worn smooth in many places, which makes the going rather tricky at times, but it is also very beautiful, with ripples carved into the rock in many places. We completed that loop with no real trouble, and headed back on the new trail, but then I decided to take a logging road in an effort to avoid the mud for a while, and also to try to find a shortcut that was less treacherous for when Hubby is ready to ride with me. Well, that logging road took me in the right direction for a while, then I saw a trail marked for the Double Arches and HCHC, so I went down that for about 50 yards before I started hitting more of those treacherous rocks, so I turned around again. I kept going down the logging road, and it started to look familiar, and I realized I had done that road early, going in the same direction, and didn't think I wanted to do THAT again, so I turned around and went all the way back to where I had turned off the new trail, and took that back to camp. Over 10 miles by the time we got through, and it was a good workout, for both of us! I washed Flash down and put him in one of the pipe corrals that hadn't been used over the weekend (the camp was nearly empty by this time, of course), gave him a bucket of water and some hay for a good job done, patted Apollo as I passed him by (explaining that horses that stand around all day don't need extra hay, he'd get dinner soon enough), grabbed a beer, downloaded my journey from MapMyHike, an app on my phone that evidently works even when there isn't a cell phone signal, because the whole route was saved, thank goodness, and sat down to get my breath back! It's quite warm, and there's another line of storms heading our way, so I'm thinking of just putting the horses in a stall tonight to keep them dry. The area where I highlined them is getting pretty muddy, and most of the pipe corrals are pretty deep with mud, too, so stalls it is! Settled down for a quiet evening.
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