Wednesday, May 22, 2013 – Met the Neighbors and Had a Ride

Late yesterday afternoon, several vehicles came in and settled down on the other side of the campground. Eventually I wandered over to say hello, and to pick their brains on what the trails are like here, as the only map seems to indicate there’s only one very long trail, no real loops, so I’m hoping there’s a few more trails that aren’t on the map. It was a woman and her daughter, and we chatted awhile, and she gave me a bit of advice about the trails that seemed would be a little helpful. I’m always wary of asking locals, though, because what seems obvious to them isn’t always so obvious (correction, is NEVER as obvious) to someone not familiar with the area. I got the impression they came early in the hopes of securing the spot we had already secured, but I told her we were leaving Friday anyway, and they were welcome to it. They headed back to home after they set up, and Hubby and I saddled the horses and headed out. The beginning of the trail was just the end of the road that brought us to the campground, then, per our neighbor’s instructions, turn right, over the bridge, and started climbing up the mountain, and climbing, and climbing. The trail became more and more narrow, and eventually was little more than a stoney creekbed, and we STILL hadn’t reached the “Rim” trail! The neighbor had told me the whole trip would be only about 90 minutes, but we had already been going that long, and hadn’t even started on the back side of the loop. The trail got so bad, I became convinced we went wrong somewhere, and finally turned around and headed back. Once I compared my GPS with the trail map, we actually were going in the right direction, we just hadn’t gone far enough to reach the perimeter trail, which was actually fine with us! We’d going far enough. I remembered seeing a walking horse sign on the side of the neighbors trailer, and figured maybe it was 90 minutes with a gaited horse, but not with our old quarter/apps! It was so steep going up, and we were so grateful to be going down, we got home a lot faster, naturally. Cleaned everybody up and settled in for the evening.