Slept late, got a late start out, but our plan was to just do a short exploratory ride today. We plotted out the shortest possible loop, which was about 5.5 miles, and headed out, expecting sloppy trails after all the rain we had Monday and Tuesday. The beginning actually turned out to be quite nice, a fairly wide forest trail meant for snowmobilers, which climbed for awhile before we came to a fork in the road. Despite the forest folks saying none of the trails were marked (which I didn’t believe, at least for the old trails, those guys ALWAYS blazed it somehow), there were in fact orange trail markers nailed to the trees. I had to get down once and move a tree that had recently fallen across the trail (probably during all the wind and rain), until we came to a fork in the road. We misjudged where we were on the map (the fork wasn’t actually on the map, what else is new?), but we ended up in the right place despite ourselves. Carefully observing the GPS insured we didn’t get too far off course, but once the orange blazes ran out at the first gate (apparently it marked a snowmobile trail with limited access), there were no real clues as to what road or trail we were on. Finally came across a side road/trail that was on the map, but the marker was almost completely buried, Hubby never saw it, and I barely saw it even when I was looking for it. We turned onto what started out as a decent dirt road, but it quickly narrowed into a pretty boggy and stony trail with lots of obstacles. We made it through okay, it eventually became a utility easement following electrical poles, until we finally came out at the back side of the campground. Turned out to be closer to 6.5 miles, but it was still pretty nice most of the way, boggy in some places, but not as bad as it could have been after all the rain. Got the horses settled back in and relaxed the rest of the day.
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