Archives for 2019

Another beautiful day here, and with no dialysis today, I planned a nice ride on Flash on the Logan trail. It had been closed down last week apparently, and the local Horse Council Club came out over the weekend and cleared it of a lot of fallen trees, as also did some mowing in areas that were way overgrown. So Flash and I headed down Hillside Trail to Trillium, which was a very nice trail. Then I decided to knock off a small red trail that turned out to be quite rugged, with some steep climbs and drop-offs, quite narrow and a little treacherous in places, but nothing an experienced horse and rider couldn't handle. It was a fairly short loop and soon brought us back to the Trillium trail, which then led us into the former horse camp area, which is now a very nice pavilion (with a good cell phone signal!) I did a couple of texts while I was there, then we headed out on the Logan Trail on the other end of the picnic area. It was clear that this trail did need a lot of maintenance, there were a lot of trees that had come down, many a long time ago and a good number more recent. Some parts of the trail had really been torn up by the four-wheeler (or tractor, not sure what they had, but it looked like it might have gotten stuck a few times), so there was some deep mud in a few spots. By now, Flash was good and warmed up, and as his wont, he started trying to go faster and faster. I let him go whenever the terrain allowed, and I'm happy to say he's starting to make better trail decisions, choosing to slow down on downhill grades and muddy sections, speeding up on uphill grades and flat ground, though there were a few knee-knockers that almost caught me once in awhile. We made short work of it, doing 8.15 miles in barely two hours, no hanging about with this one! This Flash horse really does love to go! He's making me a better horsewoman, that's for sure. We're starting to jump over logs and holes and such, which certainly is making every ride interesting! Got back by 1:00, and once everyone was put away, we got ready to go out shopping. Just after I left this morning, two trailers came in and parked next to us, so now we have neighbors again. One of them asked me to pick up something at the store, which I was happy to do, and we headed out of camp for Steubenville, stopping at the Post Office to see if my final package had come. It hadn't. Our first stop was a nice little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the mall called LeVille, where Hubby was delighted to have a big fish and chips dinner and I had a nice shrimp and vegetable pasta dish, with lots of leftovers of both. Lola came in with us and immediately lay down under the booth, her usual place when it's too hot to leave her in the truck. Of course, she has her Therapy Dog Please Pet Me vest on, so no one ever minds. Then we went into Walmart and did our shopping, and a quick stop at Rural King where I found another tire inflator that claims to go to 150 psi (we'll see!), then back to camp. Another quiet evening after that! Loving it!

Such a beautiful morning I just had to go for a ride, and decided to take Apollo since he hasn't been getting as much exercise lately. We took the Hillside trail straight down, then looped around the Lakeside trail in reverse of what I had done with Flash last time. I wanted to get a GPS trail, since for some reason I never got one on my last two rides. I finally discovered that somehow my GPS locator had been turned off! I seem to recall I had an app ask to be allowed to use my location finder and I said no, but I didn't think it would mean to not let ANY app to use it, which apparently did! Oh, well, I didn't make that discovery until almost the end of my ride today, so once again, I didn't get a good GPS map of the Lakeside trail. I'm hoping Hubby will feel well enough one day to do this trail with me, as it's only a little over three miles long and not too rugged, so I'm thinking it will be okay for him. Apollo seemed to enjoy himself as well, though it was a bit mucky in spots and he didn't much like that. Just enough exercise for him with all the ups and downs. Got back in plenty of time, but then had some problems with Hubby's dialysis Ipad, apparently somebody has accidentally unenrolled us from our current clinic, so I had to spend an hour chasing that problem down, only to end up having to revert back to a paper report while everyone tried to track down what happen and sort it out. Not much fun, but we got on with it, just another obstacle to overcome! I'm hoping the solution will be one that will be permanent, the one systemic challenge we have yet to overcome is allowing us to keep one Ipad no matter what clinic we're enrolled in. It's hurdle everyone's aware of, but has yet to be addressed, hopefully this will be the pivot point to solve the issue! Settled down in the evening to old recordings on the Dish, as again, not much of a signal here.

Got up and out early today, headed down to the Richmond Post Office where I've had several packages delivered (2 out of 3 had arrived), discovered there was NO cell phone data service in town, not even a library or cafe with wifi, so I headed back toward camp. When I got to the top of a hill just outside town, though, I noticed 4G on my phone, so I pulled into a church parking lot right at the summit and had a fabulous signal there. I spent about 45 minutes or so sending off email, uploading pictures to my diary, doing some planning and research for our travels later in the month, and general housekeeping on my computer before heading back to camp. Since we had the day dialysis free, I decided to take a longer ride today, but my plans changed a bit when an organizer from one of the local horse groups that help maintain the trails told me that they were doing trail work today on the trail I was planning to ride (Logan/Red), and that they had had reports of a number of trees down along that trail, so I decided to explore the other side of the park instead. I saddled Flash and we headed down Hillside to the lake, then took Lakeside trail counter-clockwise around the south side of that lake. That led me past the dam that created the lake, past the ball fields, then up into the woods on the other side of the road for a bit, then back across the road to the parking lot and beach area. From there I connected to the yellow trail, which turned out to be the most treacherous trail yet, very narrow, a bit slippery, and with quite a number of trees and brush to traverse around. Eventually that led me up the hill to some wider trails, back around on the green campground trail, where Flash steered VERY wide of the hole he had stepped into the other day, then back across the campground to the trail that led to the old horse camp, which had a surprising number of sites, though unkempt. Rather than take the same trail back to camp, I decided to follow the driveway out to confirm what I already thought, it came out at the playground area. A nice canter up the hill to camp (passing Lola's lost chucker on the way!), and we finished a lovely ride, about 6.5 miles, though I accidently lost the GPS info by closing the app before it synced, though I thought I had done that before and it saved it, but this time it went missing somehow. Anyway, after putting Flash away, I walked Lola down to get her chucker, which she had evidently carried down there when some kids were playing in the playground, then I taught her to go down slides and through the tunnels that make up the jungle gym. We settled down for the afternoon, reading and watching TV as the clouds started rolling in. Rain in the forecast for tomorrow!

Happy to have another beautiful day, and Hubby feeling fit enough to ride! After breakfast we saddled up and headed out on a short ride that I planned for him, on trails that I mostly hadn't been on yet and hoping they didn't present any surprises for us. Fortunately they didn't. We left on the campground loop trail, that was a bit narrower than I expected, but it provided a fairly gradual downhill grade which Hubby could handle just fine, then went down toward the lake, but didn't go all the way to the beach, since we had Lola with us and there were quite a few people around this holiday weekend. We took a trail just above the lake, which led us to the Hillside Trail, which was a straight shot up the power line, but not too steep, which was a perfect end to this short and sweet 2.4 mile ride. Hubby felt just fine when we got back, which is the way we like it, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Looking forward to a few more of those during our stay! Got him going on his dialysis machine, and relaxed the rest of the day.

After a decent night sleep and a quick breakfast this morning, I saddled up Flash under a beautiful sky and headed out for our first ride here at Jefferson Lake. The trail map that the park provides online is pretty poor, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got out on the trails that they are quite well marked, with "you are here" placards at all major intersections. There are also names for some of the trails, and intersection letters out there, but their park map shows neither of these, so it was a bit challenging until I got started using the placards. It's a fairly small park, but the trails are nicely formed to make the most of it, and we covered part of Logan's Trail and most of the western side of the park except the southwest end, which is the longest part of the trail, which I'm saving for another day. Flash did a great job, though he got a bit nervous when the trails got really narrow, and at one point, he stepped off on the downhill side into a culvert and his legs collapsed. I stepped off and let him get back up, looked him over for any damage and found none, remounted and carried on. The ride even included a short section down by the beach area, where I found a flock of Canadian geese obviously gathering for their annual southward migration. So beautiful to see, but definitely a harbinger of the coming change in the weather which is bound to start happening after Labor Day next week. It was a great ride, the trails were in pretty decent shape, though I started out with boots, and when we lost one in deep mud that I had to climb back down and up a hill to retrieve, I decided to take them off since there was very little gravel or stone on the trail for the most part, other than a few isolated places, and he didn't really need them anyway. Got back after a couple of hours to a happy husband who spent the afternoon reading in the screen room, then settled down for the evening. A perfect day!