After a decent night sleep and a quick breakfast this morning, I saddled up Flash under a beautiful sky and headed out for our first ride here at Jefferson Lake. The trail map that the park provides online is pretty poor, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got out on the trails that they are quite well marked, with "you are here" placards at all major intersections. There are also names for some of the trails, and intersection letters out there, but their park map shows neither of these, so it was a bit challenging until I got started using the placards. It's a fairly small park, but the trails are nicely formed to make the most of it, and we covered part of Logan's Trail and most of the western side of the park except the southwest end, which is the longest part of the trail, which I'm saving for another day. Flash did a great job, though he got a bit nervous when the trails got really narrow, and at one point, he stepped off on the downhill side into a culvert and his legs collapsed. I stepped off and let him get back up, looked him over for any damage and found none, remounted and carried on. The ride even included a short section down by the beach area, where I found a flock of Canadian geese obviously gathering for their annual southward migration. So beautiful to see, but definitely a harbinger of the coming change in the weather which is bound to start happening after Labor Day next week. It was a great ride, the trails were in pretty decent shape, though I started out with boots, and when we lost one in deep mud that I had to climb back down and up a hill to retrieve, I decided to take them off since there was very little gravel or stone on the trail for the most part, other than a few isolated places, and he didn't really need them anyway. Got back after a couple of hours to a happy husband who spent the afternoon reading in the screen room, then settled down for the evening. A perfect day!
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