Hi Babe,
After a casual morning, I started saddling up Flash and one of the group, Chris, came up and got Apollo to ride today, using her saddle. It wasn’t long before we were off. It had been suggested that we ask about the local trail guide Tim, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found today, so we decided to go with the trail I had already planned on, about ten miles mostly around the outer perimeter, or so I thought. Just out of camp we were on the Three Sisters trail, where there are some stunning carvings right in the rock wall, quite remarkable. We hadn’t gone too much farther when, according to my map, we were near a waterfall, and when we saw a sign for the waterfall trail we followed it. Oddly, that trail didn’t take us to the waterfall we were near, it cut us way off our route to ANOTHER waterfall that we would had reached had we stayed on our original course in about a mile! Weird! The trails are reasonably well marked, better than some I’ve seen, but there were still numerous intersections with little or no signage, and some were on the ground in pieces, so not very helpful. Glad I had my GPS map tracking us! Well, it was a nice waterfall, though they had dressed it up with a washing line full of laundry, which I guess some would consider cute, but I just thought it was a bit tacky, and took away from the natural beauty of the spot, but that’s just me. Anyway, I managed to get back on track right after that, and we made our way up to the old saloon, which was a nice picnic area. I wish it had been marked on the map that it was a picnic area, as we had stopped shortly before that on the top of a hill in the woods and had our lunch, which was nice, but not very convenient for those who had trouble climbing up on their horses without a table or mounting block to help them. Still, we made it okay. It was decided that we would skip the final far loop in favor of getting back to camp so we didn’t wear ourselves or our horses out too quickly, so we headed back down the gas pipeline in a beeline for camp. Unfortunately, that route, though open and straight, was quite steep, with several ups and downs that were quite challenging. With the gravel, we put the boots on Flash and Apollo, which helped a lot, but one of Flash’s boots was a lot worse for wear by the time we got back. It was a mostly pretty ride today, but slow going, because of the hills, one place in particular had a very steep slippery rock the horses had to literally slide down. And with so many of us, eight of us, we had to keep stopping or slowing down to wait for things, well, suffice to say that 8.5 miles over better than 3.5 hours was the slowest ride I’ve been on in a LONG time. Everybody did well though, and there were some pretty sections, but we’ll definitely avoid the pipeline in future! Too many nicer side trails. We didn’t run into too much mud, fortunately, but I’m worried that boots will be needed to be used on the gravel, and that when we do run into mud we’ll have to be very careful about not losing them. Anyway, we got back, then the rest of them rode down to the Rattlesnake Saloon, which is in a nearby cave, and evidently they were shooting a music video down there, even though the place was technically closed. I didn’t go because I had already taken off Flash’s bridle by the time someone mentioned it, no worries, I’ll check it out tomorrow. Got everything put away, had dinner with the group again, fed the horses, then finally got back to settle down for the evening. I ordered a new pair of boots for Flash, but can’t get them until next week, so I’m having them sent to Loretta’s, and I got the final contracts from the union, so I’m officially working again! Yeah! Now I can get my health insurance back, and make contributions to my pension plan, which I haven’t been able to do for a year and a half, thanks to this crazy covid thing. Anyway, a busy day, so I’m heading to bed shortly, as soon as all the pix load up, which is taking a long time because there is almost no cellphone signal here, and I’m barely in range of the local wifi, so that’s another challenge here. So I’m off to shower and bed once again! Good night, darlin’! Love you!
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