Didn't have the best night sleep last night, not sure why, but slept a little late because of it. Got up about 8:30 to hungry horses, had breakfast with Hubby, then decided to get in a ride before his dialysis session. There was rain in the forecast for this afternoon, and considering how muddy so many of the trails are already, I figured I better get a ride in before they get any worse. I saddled up Flash and headed out, having planned to do the purple trail to the orange trail in a loop. Of course, I got lost at the first intersection. I thought I left on a red trail, but when I got to the bottom, the trees were blazed in white. I couldn't quite figure out how that happened, but at the creek there was a sign that said I was at Marker B. From there I was supposed to take the red trail that I thought I was on straight to the purple trail, but since I believed I was on the white trail, and there were two red trails and two white trails marked at the intersection, I couldn't figure out which red trail I was supposed to take. Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe, I picked a red trail, which was a nice trail, but never ran into the purple trail, and in fact, came out at the entrance to the day parking area at the camp! What the heck! Whatever. I decided to do the trail in reverse since that was closer, so I headed south on the orange trail and followed that until I got to a place where the orange trail seemed to fork. Hmmm, not on the map. I finally figured out that one fork went to a kiosk and the other along the road. I couldn't find any markings, except that it appeared that the orange trail continued past the kiosk. Purple had to be along the road, but I went down a hundred yards, didn't see any markings, turned around because I thought I must be wrong, and THEN, FINALLY, saw a purple blaze on a tree going in the opposite direction. Guess I was on the right track after all. Since we were going on a gravel road, though, I stopped to put on Flash's boots, then headed down that way for a while. Then we came to more purple blazes that went into a deep wood, so the trails were particularly mucky, and what appeared to be a trail along the utility line that paralleled it, which was mostly dry. We opted for the dry route, hoping it wouldn't get too far from the purple mud. Fortunately, it didn't, it crossed over purple again later. When we reacquired the purple trail, it was sloppy downhill for quite a ways, and of course, Flash lost a boot, so we had to stop on the hill and I had to go back and retrieve it. He was a little antsy, but not as much as usual, and I left both boots off and kept going. That ended up on a road that went through a neighborhood of log cabins. I hadn't realized the trail would become road, but the blazes were still there, so I kept following it. Eventually, back on the trail again, we ended up back at the same Marker B at the creek. Since I remembered which trail we came down, and which trail we took up the wrong way, it was easy to get back to camp, using the shortest distance, which was the one we came down, of course. A bit longer, later and muddier than I had planned, but we made it, nine miles! There was a line of other people washing down their horses at the one spigot that you connect a hose to, so I had to wait awhile before I could get Flash washed down, but he was soon on his highline and I was soon getting ready for Hubby's dialysis. The session went well, we started watching an old John Wayne film neither of us could remember seeing before, and then the storms moved in. Boy, did it storm! Rain, wind, even hail for awhile was knocking on the roof and awning! Fortunately this awning with the weight of the screen room doesn't seem to be bothered much by the wind, so other than rain running off the awning and under the grass carpet, we had no problems. The electric flashed out for a moment, but I had already put the inverter on, so it transferred immediately and we had no loss of power at all, thank goodness, though I did have to restart the washer and dryer, as I was doing laundry today, too. Busy day! Had dinner, Hubby went to bed early, and I did some writing on my blog, though I can't upload it right away, as evidently the cell phone tower doesn't have power or has some other mechanical problem, as there is now zero cell phone reception at the moment. Now all I can do is take a quick shower and head off to bed! Good, though tiring, day!!
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