After picking the brain of one of the other campers here yesterday (who left this morning, leaving us pretty much on our own here today), I managed to make some sense of the hand-drawn map the manager Kelly gave me yesterday, and plotted a 6+ mile trip for today. We headed south out of the ranch, past the "Big House," and climbed up for a while on Black Canyon Trail. Rather rough going, not too steep but pretty rocky, until we finally hit the plateau full of huge saguaro cacti for a while, before finding the "Big Rock" that signaled our turn to the right. We weren't sure if it was the right place, but we were following tracks from the group that had gone out yesterday, and when they disappeared and we backtracked, they did turn at a big boulder, so we followed those roughly down hill until we reached the pipeline head, which was clearly marked on the map. Once we crossed the road and went down a bit more, we finally came to the wash, which was mostly dry, mostly flat, and mostly sand, and we soon had a wonderful canter along the riverbed. One last turn up a beautiful, narrow canyon, under the bridge of the main road, before following the wash back to camp, before finishing our 6.75 mile ride back at the entrance to the ranch. A much more interesting ride that we thought at first that it would be, and were happy the rocks didn't continue for the entire trail. Gave the horses a quick rinse off before settling down for the evening.
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