Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020 – Great Long Ride at O’Bannon

Hi darlin’,
Woke up with the alarm this morning, since I had arranged to go riding the Bob and Ginny and I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be late. We left right on schedule at 9:30, but I couldn’t put Apollo’s boots on because one of them had a blowout, so we just had to deal with whatever rough ground we came across. Fortunately, most of the trails were actual trails, dirt and mostly single track, just like I like them! We went over 12 miles, and it was a terrific ride. We covered a lot of ground, and ended up at a picnic table sitting on the edge of a bluff for lunch. A long ride for Apollo, but he did brilliantly! They both ride quarter horses, so they were all perfectly matched speed-wise, though Apollo was slow starting out, but warmed up quickly. This was truly the nicest ride I’ve experienced since I’ve been here, and I’m glad of it, though I never would have found some of these trails on my own, since a few aren’t on the map. We went cross country a couple of times, and crossed the Blue River coming and going, as we made out way to a section of the forest known as Little Italy, then Loudon’s Ridge. We were out nearly six hours, but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Got back, gave Apollo a bath, then spent a few minutes clearing out the horse wash area. I had a nice concrete pad, but it was so covered in mud you would hardly know it, so I cleared away the mud and used the hose to clear out a drain area, which improved it a lot. Then I headed up to my hotspot to check my email and solve a few more problems, and had to wait a long time for my two rides, yesterday and today, to upload from my phone to the cloud, then pull it back onto Google Earth. I wanted to see the GPS tracks from those two days of riding, but it took a lot of time. I finally finished and headed back to camp, but when I got here and opened up my computer, the darn thing had decided to shut itself down and reboot (probably because of an upgrade), so all the work I did on Google Earth disappeared, and so did a weeks worth of my diary! I have no idea why it did that, it usually asks me to close those programs before it restarts, but it did it all on it’s own today, and it ticked me off, since it’s made a lot more work for me, grrrrr! Anyway, got back to camp, made some dinner, went and chatted with Bob and Ginny for a bit, then came back to settle in for the night. Evidently there’s a big event here this weekend, so the place has been filling up all day, and it’s likely to be even busier tomorrow. No more riding for me, though, I have to start packing, plus sorting out all the stuff I need for my trip to Arizona next week. It’s going to be a busy weekend, what with driving to Tennessee on Saturday, then figuring out what to do with the trailer (still working on the logistics of that!), packing, shopping, getting a hair cut etc., and being ready to fly out on Monday. Whew! I’m going to be exhausted in a few days! Anyway, enough, time for shower and bed. Love you, babe! Good night!

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