Having had two weeks of typical, mundane living, and after doing some research, I found a new park called Onion Creek that boasts some horse trails, and it's quite close, so we packed up the horses and headed out. Parking was along the edge of a wide street, which gave us a very urban feel, but we were soon saddled up and heading to the park entrance a short half block away. We passed by a playground, following a trail through a sort of neighborhood, which we learned later was really not the right way : -), but finally took a trail on the left that led us to the main trail we should have been on. The trail followed the river, and there was a fork in the trail fairly early. I tried to follow a rather dubious map, taking the trail to the right, as the left crossed the creek and my map didn't indicate anything there. Before long, we reach the right river crossing, where the water was fairly low and quiet, though the trail up the bank on the other side was a good grade up a switchback. It was obvious that most people used the trail just to get to the creek and back, mostly to walk dogs, because most of the tracks ended at the creek, leaving the south side open for an unadulterated horse experience! The trails weren't marked, and that, combined with my dubious map, kept us guessing most of the ride, but with a general understanding where the crossing was, and the limited park area before we ran into neighborhoods kept it fairly straightforward. One time we followed the road to a gate that went into a horse ranch, so we had to turn around and take another fork. Another time, we ended up at the end of a dead end street when the trail ran out, so another turn around. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed the ride. The trail was mostly sand with only a little gravel, so we probably could have gone without boots, though we had them on as a precaution. We tried to do a perimeter around the edge of the park, but several trails on the map didn't exist, or at least weren't meant for horses, so we ended up doing some cross-country riding as well. There were a number of others trails we didn't get to, even though we covered 7.2 miles in the end, crossing back over the creek in the same place (though the map indicated several other crossings), and were back to the trailer, this time finding the right trail back, with a nice canter along the last stretch on the trail, though it was cut short by the large number of hikers and dog walkers that were on the trail. A popular park, even during the mnid-week, but we ran into no one on the far side of the creek. A gorgeous day, a gorgeous ride, perfect!
