Hi Darlin’,
I was having some trouble getting to sleep, and then I heard some folks arriving at 1:30 in the morning! Crazy! Put my earplugs in and managed to fall asleep after that, though not enough hours. Did my chores, then around 9:20 I drove down to the office hoping to get five minutes with Anthony the manager about getting a schedule together to hand out so folks will know what’s going on (my bone of contention last year!), and we ended up talking for 90 minutes! He seemed very receptive to all of my ideas, and asked me to combine them with some of his and put something together, which I promised to have by end of day. Finally got back to the trailer, poor Callie and her dad had been waiting for an hour, I was apoplectic with apologies for the delay, I hadn’t taken my phone with me, but they were very understanding. Anyway, Callie and I went to get the horses, and Trail Boss Bubba had shown up and parked in his usual spot next to the barn, and he and I got into a pretty heated discussion about a whole range of things, most of it not worth mentioning, and we managed to work it out in the end, though it took better than half an hour to accomplish. We FINALLY got the horses saddled and took off. I had put together what I though would be a fairly straightforward and not too complicated route, and we were doing great on it, right up until Callie said she thought this was the longest we had ever gone riding together and not gotten lost, and wouldn’t you know? Right after that, we got lost. Grrrr! I STILL don’t know where we went wrong, it’s just crazy how badly marked the horse trails are here! I had planned about a five mile trip, thinking maybe a bit over two hours, it ended up being 3:45! It was after 4:00 when we got back. Callie’s parents showed up a bit later, we put the horses away, then I settled down to work on my project, got that finished, fed the horses, and finally settled down for the evening. Feeling pretty tired (not to mentioned frustrated that I keep getting lost in here!), so I’m guessing I’ll sleep better tonight! Going to bed early, for sure! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hi Babe,
Not the best night sleep, but woke up with the alarm because the first thing on my agenda was a virtual visit with my knee surgeon, everything’s coming along fine, next visit is three months from now. Got the horses and Lola and me fed, then I went looking for Anthony, but he hadn’t come back from Nashville, so I grabbed a trash bag and my picker-uppers and started cleaning up the trash that was strewn everywhere. What a mess this last group made! Evidently there were a lot of law enforcement types, and while I support our men and women in blue, I must say that this group earned the moniker ‘pig.’ I never saw some much trash piled up, nowhere near a trash container! Anyway I did that for a few hours, got most of it done, though there are a still a few corners I need to revisit. Still no sign of Anthony, so I decided to take a ride and see what kind of shape the trails are in. I fastidiously planned a route, only to have it go bust on many occasions when the markings on the trails, and even the trails themselves, were not match anywhere. I’d forgotten how steep and rough so many of the trails here are, very challenging! I put on Flash’s new boots and they were perfect, and Flash worked his butt off today! After six months on flat sandy trails, this was a really tough day for him! All over the trails we kept finding yellow caution tape strung everywhere, though I’m sure it was for the jeep or dirt bike people, because there was very little in the way of downed trees. Well, I take that back, there are several areas where the trees are down and evidently have been for some time, so some trails have been permanently rerouted, except some of the old markers are still out there, so naturally the confusion caused some misdirection. I would LOVE to refurbish all the trail markers and do a new map, one that clearly distinguishes between the motorized vs. the horse trails. There were so many mismatched markers it was hard to figure out what trail I was on, much less what trail I was SUPPOSED to be on! It would take some time, but it would certainly be worth doing. Anyway, we finally got back to camp around 5:00, and I stripped down Flash to his bridle, then hopped on bareback and headed for the creek. He was hesitant, but I eventually got him in pretty deep. Not enough to swim, but I didn’t want to push him, it took me long enough just to get him belly deep! Afterwards I fed them, played with Lola in the water for awhile, even bringing my chair down to sit in the creek for a bit, and finally got everything settled for the evening. Hopefully I’ll find Anthony in the morning, I have so many questions to ask about the trails, and to find out what he wants me to do as his volunteer force. So I’m off to shower and bed! Good night, honey! Love you!

Hi Babe,
Well, this is definitely a case of “Glad I came, but won’t be back!” I had a hard night sleep, as I typically do when I eat late and drink hard liquor, woke up around 3:30 and took a long time getting back to sleep, daylight was coming by then. Rose up to say good-bye to my Florida panhandle folks who were planning on driving all the way back today, close to eight hours straight home. Hope they made it okay! Saddled up Flash after breakfast, put his boots on, tried to duct tape the one that fell apart, it got me about as far as the trailhead (100 feet), and I had to take it off. I stayed with one on for awhile, switched it over once just to keep it balance, but eventually took that one off, too, and he was barefoot most of the second half of the ride. I tried to stay on wider trails today, and for a couple of minutes, I even got on a section of the C trail where I started to relax! I hadn’t realized it, but I hadn’t had that feeling all week! But it was short-lived, because that soon turned to deep mud, with occasional side trails that went around it which were only marginally better in some cases. Still, there was more to like about the C trail than to dislike, so it wasn’t bad. I had planned to take 16 out towards Mountain Top, but it was in really bad shape, evidently it hasn’t been looked after in quite some time, and I eventually figured out that it actually goes below the bluff not on top of it, but I didn’t know that till much later. I opted to pick up 17, which was obviously a more traveled trail, and that took me all along the edge of the bluff for awhile. Not too bad, just a lot of knee-knockers, so I was constantly pushing against trees to prevent a disaster (so not relaxing, again!) I misread the map (again) and ended up back at the old saloon (which I had already passed once, then followed the signs to Bald Knob, another destination with a 360 degree panoramic vies and a flagpole on top, where I ran into three other riders who tagged along with me as I headed down the trail to the pipeline. They stopped at the picnic table and I kept going, mostly on the eastern pipeline (which is a bit nicer than the western one) until I arrived back at 3 sisters trail. Then I headed into the woods on trail 1, which was right near camp and actually one of the nicer trails I’ve seen except, of course, it had some knee-knockers, too. We did eight miles, though Flash wasn’t too happy because of the stones and gravel, but Lola really had a good time, as always. I got back around 3:00, put everyone away, and eventually decided to go down to the Rattlesnake Saloon, which is the main attraction here, a restaurant partially inside a cave, with live music and bar food. It requires a taxi ride (a pickup truck with benches in the back) to get there, and I tried to bring Lola along, but the security guy refused her, saying it was a health department violation. That’s interesting, since I’ve never been turned away from a restaurant, a hospital, a senior home or anywhere else for that matter, this is the first time ever. Well, that’s just another item on a long list of reasons not to come back here! I brought her back to the trailer and returned, where the line had gotten three times as long and there looked like there might be a wait. I did managed to get on the next trip, though, but the only table they had was a six-top in the outer section, which was crazy for just me. Worse, the table next to me had five people, all smokers, and the wind was such it was all coming straight at me. I asked the server if she had a fan she could put out to blow it in the other direction, but she didn’t. Fortunately, a four-top farther away from them opened up, and she was kind enough to let me move over there. The burger was decent and the fries small and seasoned, the hard cider okay, I wasn’t really interested in the live music though it sounded about like what you’d expect from a local, rural Alabama band I suppose. Got back before 7:00, got the horses fed and put up on the highline, then went over to visit my other neighbors from Indiana, who I haven’t had much time to spend with, and we had a nice chat. I had a chance to do my Snowy River for them, they seemed to appreciate it. Once mosquito hour hit, it was time to settle down, now it’s time for my shower and bed! Good night, darlin’! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
Well, I’m still in search of a trail worthy of recommending to anyone, sorry to say. Haven’t found one I’d even care to go back to, really. I did my usual morning routine, and since most of the group was driving ninety minutes somewhere to visit an Amish farmers market, I had decided to take Flash on a “short” trip today, but, as usual when the trails are poorly marked, that turned out to over nine miles, and a lot of them are really tough miles! We headed first to a destination called the Wave Rock, which was essentially a bluff, but it was unusually smooth for quite a distance, which is somewhat remarkable. Then, despite my GPS in one hand and the map in the other, I still ended up getting turned around because of poor trail markings and renegade trails that aren’t even on the map! Grrr! I ended up going a silly circle in rough terrain just to get out of it again! Finally I got back on track, at least for awhile, but I was plagued by the same annoyances for the entire ride. The boot that wasn’t in great shape got completely twisted, so I had to take it off, then at one point Flash slipped on one of these flat rocks in the middle of a road and went down. I managed to stay on during his first effort, but he slipped again and I came off on the second, slamming my hip onto the rock, so I’m sure I’ll have a nice bruise there by the time I get home. I passed a marker for the Indian shelter, which was still a mile away, and that was the last marker that I saw for it, even though I went on 4 or 5 different trails to get there. There was one quarter mile section of trail 33 to the lower waterfall that I like, but it didn’t last long and got worse afterwards. Flash’s second boot slipped off, so finally I took that off as well so he was barefoot most of the way. I got tired of narrow, knee-knocking trails so I stayed on more of the wider trails, but of course they had more gravel so it bothered him more. I must have backtracked more than half a dozen times trying to follow my planned route, and even then, I ended up on trails that didn’t match the map very well. So even though I was on the back of my horse, my usually mellow happy place, I was so frustrated and annoyed that it wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. At least we were able to go faster and not have to worry about the big group, but still, it wasn’t as much fun as I hoped it would be. Lola came along this time, though, which was mostly the point of going out alone today, and she enjoyed herself for sure, though she got ahead of us a few times and had to come a long way back to catch up with us when we backtracked. Anyway, I finally got back to camp, spent some time working on my weekly reports in advance, was hoping to set up the accounting as necessary but the signal is so bad here it’s almost impossible to get on the internet, whether it’s my Verizon hotspot or the ranch wifi. Didn’t need that added stress here either! Like always, though, I’m glad I came, just don’t expect me to do it again! I learn from every experience, and Flash was really good today, despite the fact I’m sure he was tired and sore from yesterday. Anyway, a long hot shower and bed is in my immediate future! Good night, babe! Love you!

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!