Archives for September 2012

  Set the alarm for before 8:00, since we had to trailer to horses over the Acadia and wanted time to get a good ride in. We had them loaded up and heading over a little after 10:00. Took a wrong turn on the road, though, and ended up going toward Bar Harbor (at least we got to see some of it), and also managed to find a post office that accepted both my letter and my UPS package, so we got a couple of chores done on the way. We finally arrived at the Brown Mountain parking lot, which I had been told would be large enough for horse trailers, but that wasn’t exactly true. The lot was pretty full, and it was too small to turn around in, but we did manage to park along one end of the parking lot, out of the way, more or less. We saddled and booted up, and headed out on the famous carriage trails, built by John D. Rockefeller in the early 20th century, and known world-wide for its’ amazing bridges and roads. Most of the footing was very small pebbles, and every road had a row of beautiful and useful rocks along it on both sides, as well as draining ditches, which meant the road had excellent footing, as expected. We probably didn’t really need boots, but better safe than sorry. We headed out, and at the first intersection I asked Hubby where he wanted to go, he said, “Down to the beach”, so we turned right and started following signs for Seal Harbor. Not surprisingly, the intersections were well-marked, with both road signs and post numbers which corresponded to the map. Lots and lots of lovely loops here, and I can’t say enough about the incredible bridges! Real works of art. We went down to Seal Harbor, only to discover it was just a parking lot, across from which we could sort of see the ocean, or bay, or whatever it was, but there was no access to the beach, as it was a part of that rocky shoreline for which Maine is so famous. We then headed east to follow a road around the bottom end of Long Lake, then turned north to loop back around. The weather was absolutely perfect, the roads spectacular, the horses were brilliant and willing the whole way. We got in many trots and a few canters (Hubby did more canters because his mare is still favoring one of her back legs on the trot, though it is improving) and plenty of walking. We were happily surprised to find that much of the park is hilly, even mountainous (from an Eastern point of vew). We thought that being an island, it would be mostly flat like most Atlantic-side islands seem to be. We ended up riding for exactly four hours, just over 10.6 miles, longer than we’ve been doing but since we figured this would be our only day to ride (there’s rain in the forecast for tomorrow), we wanted to make it a good one. It certainly was! The weather started to turn, with the wind picking up a bit as we packed the horses up in the trailer. On the way back to the campground, though, we simply had to complete our downeast Maine experience with lobster, so we stopped at the Downeast Lobster Pound for a fabulous, sloppy, finger-licking good lobster dinner. For $15 each, we got a 1 lb. Lobster, a huge ear of checkerboard corn, some coleslaw and a roll. We also got a hot chocolate to warm us up while we waited in the restaurant for our number to be called. It was delicious, though like all lobster, it was time consuming, which we figured was good, we would burn off calories as we were taking them in, so it might be a net weight loss in the end (not… : -). Once we cleaned ourselves up after that, we headed back to camp, fully satisfied that we’d had a most memorable day!

Thanks to some campers at Bradbury Mountain, we learned of a small State Park very near Acadia National Park called Lamoine. While they normally don’t take horses, they were willing to put us in their unused group campsite, while again only charging us for a single site. I’m really beginning to like Maine and it’s people, they are so accommodating and friendly, it’s remarkable! We headed off early again, only stopping once for fuel and once for a few things at Walmart. We arrived in the early afternoon and were guided by one of the several camphosts down to the site. Since it was technically a tenting area, we parked the vehicles in a parking area at the edge of the campsite, then put the horses out on their anchors in nice lush grass, which the park manager had instructed their volunteer lawn-cutters NOT to mow over the weekend so that our horses could graze on it… See what I mean about accommodating? The horses loved it, and happily munched away outside our patio door. We also found a very secluded spot hidden the woods perfect for their highline for their overnight security. We had everything set up, including satellite dish, by mid-afternoon, so we settled down for a relaxing rest of the day, looking forward to our ride at the much touted Acadia Carriage roads.

  Headed out about 1:00, crossing the road to the West Side trails. We thought they would be busy yesterday (and they probably were), but it was still very crowded today. Haven’t seen a trail with this many people on it since the Grand Canyon! Lots of hikers and a few bikers, with many of them stopping to admire the horses. We followed the well-marked trails in a figure 8, along trails with mostly a large rock and pine root surface until we reach the top of Bradbury mountain, where it opened up on to a large, relatively flat rock area that was covered with people sitting on blankets, walking around and socializing, eating picnic lunches, and just generally it looked like a day at the beach! Never seen anything like it! A very jovial atmosphere, though, and naturally, every kid around wanted to come and pet the horses. Hubby and I took turns walking down to see the view and entertaining the kids and their parents, staying more than half an hour there at the top, which was a nice way to fill in the day of what would otherwise would have been a pretty short ride. The view was spectacular, the trees just starting to change, and way, way, way off in the distance you could see the ocean, though I had to put my camera on superzoom to get it, and wasn’t really sure about it until I looked the pix later in the evening. Beautiful! Eventually we headed back down the mountain and back to the campground, only getting a few short chances to trot because of the rough pine root surface, but it was a lovely ride on a perfect day or sunshine and moderate temps, exactly the kind of day for which we are always searching!

  Though my hearing is still not great, we felt good enough to take a ride today. After a leisurely breakfast, we saddled up and got out around 1:00 or so, following the East side trail map, though it turned out to almost not be necessary. The trails were very well-marked, with “You Are Here” placards at most intersections. The map was useful inasmuch it had a legend of trails that were not recommended or forbidden for horses, and that was helpful. We wanted to keep it simple anyway, so we stuck to the snowmobile trails, which were the widest and best marked. The footing was a bit rocky, but we had put their boots on, so the horses were fine with that. Clio was still limping a bit at the trot, but since the trail was so rocky, we stayed at a walk most of the time anyway. We stayed on the snowmobile trail until we reached the park boundary, then decided to try the Ginn trail, which was listed as not recommended for horses, but we were curious as to what that meant, so we dared it anyway. It was a bit narrower, which we liked, but we soon came to an “obstacle”, a boggy area that had a narrow plank boardwalk not suitable for horses, so we had to walk alongside it, which meant the horses were sinking in the mud a bit. Not quite impassible, but I wouldn’t want to try that on a day after a rain. There were two spots like that, and once we got around them the trail soon opened up to a snowmobile wide track again, and we continued around the perimeter until we returned to the campground. A very nice ride, just under 5 miles, just long enough to build up a little from our last ride, and to start getting the horses (and us!) back into shape.

Set the alarm for an early start, packed up and headed out by 8:30. I couldn’t find an RV dump on any of the maps, but when I called the ranger station yesterday, they told me it was behind the ranger station, so that was our first stop. There was absolutely no signage to the RV dump, but evidently the woman I had spoke to yesterday saw us coming and directed us to the dump, which she had to open a gate for us to get to! Of course, first I had to turn around again, as I had passed the unmarked entrance. What a poorly-managed place! I don’t know what they’re so afraid of here, there’s just this attitude that they’re afraid everyone’s going to take advantage of them and they have to prevent it at all costs, regardless of how much energy it takes! What is it about certain places, they just assume everyone is out to rip them off! All this nonsense with car tags (which no one every checked, by the way), and a locked gate to the RV dump, what’s that all about? Anyway, we finally got under way, stopped at a Burger King for breakfast, then headed up the highway (avoiding Boston entirely), first to a place where I had arranged to pick up hay (very nice hay, though the bales were kind of light for $6 each, but it was beautiful 2nd cutting hay that they were just bringing in from the field), then on to Bradbury Mountain State Park in Maine, with one stop at Shaws for grocery while Hubby stopped for gas. The park was just a few miles off the highway and very easy to find, though we made a wrong turn into the main park area instead of the campground a little further up the road. We were immediately met by a young woman ranger who had a package for me (I had arranged for a delivery and she was kind enough to bring it with her to meet us), and she made an excellent recommendation of a site suitable for us. Actually, it was two sites next to each other, but they let us have both while only charging us for one. Horses are not generally allowed here, but since it was off-season and they had the room, they were very accommodating. Not long afterward, the park manager stopped by to make sure everything was okay, again being very accommodating and friendly. It didn’t take long to get settled in, and after awhile, the woman ranger returned to collect payment. When I asked her if I needed to display my receipt in the dash of one of the vehicles, she said, “No, that’s okay, we know you’re here.” What a change from Massachusetts! Everyone was super-friendly, and it was like night and day from our last experience! Neighboring campers all greeted us nicely, several came up to visit with the horses, it was really wonderful. In fact, the only drawback was that even though quiet hours were after 10 pm, generator hours ended at 7, which made it a little hard because our batteries have been a bit weak, which means our usual evening of TV was shortened considerably, and we were so surrounded by trees we couldn’t get a satellite signal so all we had were recorded programs to watch. No matter, when the TV switched off, we just went to bed and read our Kindles for awhile. Still need to fight this bug and regain my hearing, so I’m not opposed to getting more sleep!

Still can’t hear very well, but feel better otherwise, so we decided we’d run out of time and just had to ride today. Saddled the horses up and headed out on one of the trailheads from the campground, though it wasn’t marked on any of the maps we had download from the internet or picked up at the office. The trail was mostly sand and dirt footing, which was nice, and the trees were mostly scrub pines, typical of areas near the beach, but the trail was quite narrow, and there were lots of very thick shrubbery and short trees crowding the trail, so the horses kept getting poked in the belly and their legs kept getting brushed by the shrubs, so it wasn’t an entirely comfortable ride. But we were happy to be out, and the horses seemed glad to be on the trail again, too. Apollo barreled along without hesitation, intent on getting through the brush, and to my addled mind, seemed to be walking faster and seemed taller than I remembered. That’s what comes from not riding for a month! Finally, we came out onto a sandy stretch that I identified as the gas line, which we discovered was also technically considered the bridle path. We crossed over it to a dirt road, which was a long straightaway, and started to trot and canter for a bit. Suddenly Hubby pulled up and said he thought Clio was limping, so we did a few test trots, and sure enough, she was favoring her back left leg. We decided not to press our luck, so based on my GPS, we took the most direct line back to the campground, which meant cutting through another camping area, then following the road. Fortunately, we had made a big loop, so we were only about a half mile away from the campground, and Clio seemed fine at the walk, so we just took our time getting back. Once there, Hubby put liniment all along her leg, and some wound salve on what seemed to be a little abrasion above her back heel. We weren’t sure what the cause was, so we were trying to cover all our bases! She also looked like she might have a bruise on her thigh, as if she had been kicked by a horse with shoes, which was highly possible at the horse farm, but only time will tell. Anyway, at least we got our ride in, and we can check Massachusetts off our list!