A quiet night last night let us have a leisurely morning, then we put the new tire on and replaced the spare back up under the RV, which only took about 15 minutes. We then saddled up and headed out, following a series of trails I had drawn from the map I got from the office the first day. Unfortunately, the first "trailhead" off the road was completely unmarked, and even though I thought I knew where it was from a map, I had to force Apollo up a sharp incline over a ditch to get into the woods, and then after two steps he tripped on something, and when I looked back I realized he had tripped over the bottom string of a barbed wire fence! The top strings had been removed, but I've never seen any kind of trailhead that had barbed wire across it, so we decided we must be in the wrong place, and stayed on the road until we hit Deer Pen Road, which was the next crossing that would get us where we wanted to go. Hubby didn't like being on the gravel road, but Deer Pen was grassy and dirt, so it was much better from then on. We eventually picked up the route I had planned, and the farther we got along the route, the less traveled the trails were, but it was lovely! We had some nice straight-aways for canters, then lots of un-maintained forest roads that had some deadfall, but nothing too hard to get around. On the way back from the farthest loop, we decided to try my original plan backwards, so we could see if we just missed the entrance on the other end. By now we knew what kind of condition the trails were in and could easily identify them, so we followed along, adding a few side trips along the way, until we finally came out at exactly the same location where we had tried to get on the trail in the first place! So my map had been right, but the trailhead was all but invisible from the road! And I've never heard of anyplace that hadn't at least removed the barbed wire from the entrance, or put a culvert of some kind over the ditch, or had some kind of trail marking that at least let us know we were going in the right direction! But once you're on the trail, it's lovely, just under-maintained, so a lot of downed branches. This place is really a diamond in the rough! I was told by a ranger that there is another equestrian trail that is still unofficial, but better marked by a local equestrian club with pink flags, but that's more on the north section, not near the campground. Of course, the group camp on the other side of the lake, with corrals and trails, but ONLY group camp, so we weren't about to stay there! In any event, we did more than eight miles before I took Apollo down to the boat ramp for a drink. Of course, Lola immediately went to find her ball to start putting it in the GoDogGo fetch machine, despite having just covered eight plus miles! We grabbed a beer and sat at the picnic table chilling for a bit, then Ranger Bill came along and chatted with us for awhile, and I shared some of my ideas for making this a much more attractive place for horse campers. Dinner and some chores preparing for our departure later, and we are ready for an early night sleep!
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