Your Horse Camping and Trail Riding Network
Spent the day recovering from yesterday’s excitement and doing some computer work, figuring we would ride tomorrow when the weather would be warmer. Today was rather chilly, with a strong north wind dropping the temps into the forties, and since we prefer to be fair weather riders, we held off until tomorrow. A simple relaxed evening.
One of the things we love most about being on the road is, if you decide you can’t get along with your neighbors, you can just move on, which is what we ended up doing today. It all started late last night. At about 9:00, one of the dogs came to us and asked to go out, so, being in an campground with just one other camper on the far side of the campground (and who had made friends with our two dogs within five minutes of our arrival on Tuesday), we simply opened the door and let them both out. Their habit is to simply explore for a few minutes, go off into the woods to do their business (which they’ve been specifically trained to do), then return shortly. The only time they might be delayed is if there is a very social environment, and they, especially little Billy (who is a social butterfly) might go visiting if people are sitting around a campfire. To date, this has never been a problem anywhere we go, and in fact, most are quite happy to befriend our cute little guy. Of course, we don’t do this if we are near a busy road or urban environment, or if there is a large crowd in an area where dogs must be leashed at all times. In other words, we use common sense to insure no one is unnecessarily bothered by our dogs. Well, moments after letting the dogs out, a car pulled into the campground (remember, this is 9:00 at night). Of course, the dogs doing their job, started barking at the new strangers. I immediately called in our big and obedient dog Marina, but Billy wouldn’t come in, so I put on a coat to go get him in. It turned out the newcomers were, in fact, our absentee camp hosts, who had not been here all week, but, judging from the dirt on their RV, had been in situ for some time. I called out, apologizing, gathering up Billy and heading back to our RV. From behind me, a male voice called out, “You have to put your dogs on a leash.” I responded, “Even in the middle of the night?” He answered, “Yes.”, I replied, “That’s disappointing,” and kept going. It should have ended there, but he persisted. “Ma’am, we have a dog and we have to put him on a leash, and so do you.” Just the way he said it made me bristle, involuntarily, and I answered, “I GOT it,” and I headed back in. I repeated the “conversation” to Hubby, and he said, “Well, that’s it, we leave tomorrow.” So I got back on the computer to find what options we had. We ended up not getting to bed until almost midnight because our adrenaline had hitched up a notch. Anyway, this morning, I made a few phone calls, disappointed that our first choice, Lake Louisa, flat out didn’t allow dogs at the horse camp (allowed at the family campground, but not the horse campground – go figure), we considered Ocala NF, which was free but had no facilities, and finally settled on Rock Springs Preserve next to Wekiwa State Park just north of Orlando. It has a barn and water for the horses, an extensive trail system that is shared with a riding ranch concessionaire in the same campground location. An easy 2-hour drive, we stopped for breakfast, the later to dump at a Petro (but didn’t get fuel there because their prices were so high), then picked up gas near Wildwood before heading out to the camp. Arrived around 2:00, discovered a water spigot with potable water we used to fill up the RV, parked next to the barn, and got settled in in no time. Our new backyard is beautiful, with a number of live oak trees with delightful hanging moss, and even though it’s quite chilly from a strong north breeze, we’re looking forward to a great ride tomorrow. Interestingly, scattered around the fields around us are numerous large John Deere tractors and farm equipment. At first we thought maybe they were having some kind of equipment convention here this weekend, but a little research discovered that the local John Deere dealer apparently leases out much of the area as a demonstration area for their potential customers. The odd things one learns while traveling like this! We saw a number of vehicles moving around the fields, so I guess some folks were test driving! Anyway, we settled in for the evening, delighted with our new digs, and the memory of our last human encounter quickly fading, thank goodness.
Spent the day working on the computer expanding my Google Earth listing of horse camps, while it rained for a good part of the day. Hubby read and watched TV, then took a short trip into town to pick up a few things before we settled in for the evening.
THESE are the kinds of rides we live for! After sleeping WAY too late (if there can be such a thing when there’s no appointments pending :-), we finally managed to get out on the trail about 12:30. And what a trail it was! We started on the red trail, where the footing was sand and dirt often covered by leaves, and it meandered through a variety of terrain (though all flat), with some areas filled with squash palms and others with large old growth trees that were perfectly stunning. The trail took us close to the Santa Fe River, which apparently is mostly an above ground river that suddenly turns subterranean where Oleno State Park is, the “rises” to the surface again, thus explaining the name of our wildlife area. From the read trail we looped back on part of the yellow trail, which extends a very long way on the other side of 441, which is a very busy road so we decided not to cross it today, but might do over the weekend, then meandered through some of the green trail, which were mostly sandy roads, which were perfect for long trots, canters, and we even got a few gallops in, would you believe! It was fantastic! Both us and the horses were very relaxed, even at the gallops (which I think they’re starting to really enjoy knowing we’re getting so comfortable with them). We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ride! We were out just under three hours, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Although we had originally planned on moving south on Friday, it looks like we’re going to stay for the weekend so we can get that 15-mile yellow trail done on Saturday. A perfect day!
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| Just a few of many deer we saw on the trail |
Well, though it didn’t rain, it stayed cloudy all day, and was colder than we thought it would be, but at least we’re moving further south! An uneventful drive to Oleno State Park where we picked up our credentials for River Rise, followed their driving instructions (which put the horse camp in a place WAY outside where Google Earth says the boundaries are for River Rise!), went through the locked gate to find quite a substantive barn and an area filled with gorgeous live oaks, picnic tables and fire rings scattered about. We filled up the water tank from the washrack, picked a spot next to the barn and were settled in in not time. The trails looked quite inviting, and there’s an extensive trail network here, so we’re very much looking forward to our ride tomorrow!
Well, the forecasters were right today, despite having clear skies when we went to bed, it rained most of the night later on, and well into the morning. It quit about noon, but the train of rain was between us and our next destination, so we decided to stay one more day. Used it to do housekeeping, laundry, reading, and keep searching for new horse camps, as I have a very good broadband signal here, though I’m getting close to maxxing out my monthly limit, so I may have to spring for another megabyte. Either that or give it a rest for awhile, and that’s hard to do! Hopefully the forecasters will be right and tomorrow will be sunny!
Since our original plan was to only stay here two nights, we wanted to try to get everything in today. We started out with a nice ride after breakfast. The trails were great, typical Gulf coast sand/clay/pine needles and leaves. Despite the enormous amounts of rain, there were only a few puddles on the trails, and none of them more than an inch or two deep. The only drawback is there are only a few miles of trails, and one of them was closed. We took the Fenceline loop, which is only about 3 miles long, then when we hit the dirt road, we decided to go for a run down the road a ways. The horses were brilliant again, frisky and eager despite the fact that the last ride we took was 15 miles long, so they charged ahead with a lovely trot and canter along the road. It seems the 3 mile walk had just barely warmed them up. We cantered for a bit, then turned around and cantered back, and still they hadn’t even broken into a sweat. Still, it was a nice ride, though they were quite surprised we were back in camp in less than 90 minutes. I could almost read my horse’s eyes, “Is that it?” Not to worry, we’ll be going places with lots longer trails, I assured him. After they were put away, Hubby and I had some soup (our standard lunch on our new “New Year’s Resolution Diet”, which I just made up, and which we’ve each lost about 7 pounds in the last 4 weeks, not fast but steady), then we drove over to the cavern tour in time for the 3:00 tour, which lasted about an hour. It was supposed to last 50 minutes, but we kept slowing down to take photos, and, as usual, the tour guide wanted to go at a much faster pace than we did. I’m glad Carlsbad Caverns still has mostly self-guided tours so that you can go at your own pace, but unfortunately they don’t do that here. So we go to race from one room to the next, only to stand around for 10 minutes listening to bad jokes and lame stories, with the rare piece of informative tidbit thrown in occasionally. Not bad, though, there were some pretty good formations of interest. Afterward, we came back to camp, set the PVR up for the Superbowl, and watched a good western movie. Unlike most people, we like to watch the football, not the commercials, so skip through them on our Dish PVR. So about halfway through we joined the game (from the beginning, and skipped the ads and the commentary, jumping from play to play. We caught up to the Live shot about halfway through the 4th quarter, which was just perfect for us, and watched it till the end. A great game, so much closer than so many of them, we enjoyed it completely. Way to go Green Bay! Nice to know they still have a good team even without Brett Favre. Anyway, the weather forecast is looking dismal for tomorrow, with great streams of rain training from the southwest to the northeast, so it looks like we may be stuck here another day if we want to travel in sunny weather, which we like to do to keep the hay dry. At least I’ll be able to get more laundry done!
Well, despite assurances from the weather forecasters, it was not a sunny day today. It was cloudy and overcast almost the entire trip, and at one point we ran into a bit of beady little snow. Other than a couple of stops for fuel and to pick up breakfast, it was an otherwise uneventful drive. Arrive at Florida Caverns State Park around 3:30, got checked right in (I had made the reservation online), stopped at the dump in the park (the one at the Mississippi border where we originally had planned to dump was closed), and quickly got settled in. There are only three equestrian sites here, two of which can be reserved, one they withhold for walk-ins. There is a good sized field and woods area next to us though, where lots more tent campers could find a spot. We get water and electric and stalls for the horses for $20/night total, which is high but could be much worse. There are 5 or 6 large covered box stalls, and maybe 10-12 small open stalls as well. We were the only ones here with horses, though there were a number of folks around in tents. Got settled in, started doing laundry (practically mandatory when we have electric AND water together), and relaxed for the rest of the night.
Slept late since there wasn’t any real reason to get up, and in bed was the warmest place in the house. Really lazy day today, since we couldn’t ride or do anything outside. Watched movies and news, that was about it today. Hubby’s eye is better now, nothing to stop us from moving on tomorrow!
Cold and wet all day, woke up to a layer of ice covering the tarp over the hay, the generator, and everything else out in the open. Got the horses out of the trailer where they had spent the night. Hubby spent most of it watching TV and I worked on finding more horse camps in the south and east, which I had done before but got lost when my computer crashed and I didn’t realize that Carbonite wasn’t saving my Google Earth My Places (which I now move to a file that I know will be backed up regularly). Mostly found places in Florida, which, judging by the unusually cold weather, is going to be where we stay for the next 6-8 weeks. Put the horses in the trailer again for the night, as the forecast was for 100% chance of rain and lows near freezing. Sure wish we’d made it to Florida before now, not looking forward to yet another day of cold wet weather, but we’ll just have to hunker down and suffer through it! At least we’re not having 60 inches of snow, which seems to be the norm for everyone north of the Mason-Dixon!