Archives for 2019

Amazingly, Hubby felt well enough to ride again today, so happy he's feeling better! I think this new dialysis schedule of one day on, on day off is doing him a world of good. We just have to hope his blood is getting clean enough, which we should know soon from the labs we drew last week. Anyway, We had breakfast, and then I got the horses saddled, and again, Hubby rode Apollo. We decided to take a loop that was less than three miles, and that hopefully was a bit more gradual on the downhill grade than the orange trail. The start of that trail was up the road just a bit, but we decided to take Lola with us today, she's been feeling a bit left out lately, especially having to be on a leash so much of the time here. We found the trailhead with no problem, but just as we crossed the road, Hubby lost a fastener on his slobber strap, so I had to stop and jury-rig it with a spare piece of leather string I had strapped to my saddle. Once that was done, we continued on our way, and it was quite a nice ride, except that there was a couple of trees down, one that required us to climb quite a ways up a hill to get around, and Hubby got a little stuck for a few minutes (he had to rest from the exertion), but eventually he got around it with only one small scrape on his arm. After a few more rests along the way, we managed to reach the orange trail with it's upward climb, and were back in camp in no time. Another great ride for Hubby!! Yay!!! No trouble dismounting, and he made it back to his comfy gravity chair, where he planned to stay most of the rest of the day, reading. I unsaddled Apollo and put him away, but I still wanted to take a longer ride, though I realized it wouldn't be the long ride I had planned yesterday, but another ride was still possible. So I headed back out the orange trail, which is about the main trail that most other trails end up on at one time or another, and based on some suggestions from Phyllis, turned left at Marker M, which led me to a fence, turned right there, and right again when I came to the next "T." This took me on a trail that was marked white on the trees (which, evidently, is how practically every single side trail is marked, including all directions at every intersection, so it's not very helpful), but on the map it's marked in purple. The story I got from Phyllis was that evidently all the trail markers are sitting around somewhere waiting to be put up, but the powers-that-be didn't want the trail markers to go up until the maps were printed and ready for distribution. Well, they were distributed last Monday, but since the trail markers aren't up yet, it's very confusing to someone who doesn't know their way around, like me. The route that Phyllis recommended, she said wasn't even on the map! How crazy is that? Anyway, I did follow her instructions, and it was quite a lovely ride, weaving along edges of bluffs and and through the woods. Most of the footing was pretty good, with only a few really sloppy spots. Fortunately, there weren't any other trees down along that route, so we had no more detour troubles. When we turned onto the orange trail for the final leg home, I let Flash pick and choose his own way, trying to get him to use his mind a bit more. In the woods, I still have to steer him around practically every tree or he starts heading off the trail, but when I let him choose his own way on the orange trail, I think he finally started to get the idea that he could make his own decisions, and that seemed like a new idea to him. I think he's always been kept under a tight rein, never having to think for himself, but I really need to get him like Apollo, where he can just be put on a loose rein and he'll know to follow the trail himself without constant supervision. A work in progress, for sure! When I got back and downloaded the route to MapMyHike,which was just over 4.5 miles, then opened it in Google Earth and overlaid it on the trail map, it turned out that trail was on the map after all! It was just colored purple when the trail markers were white, so I guess that must have been confusing to even an old hand like Phyllis! Anyway, it was after 4:00 by the time I got back, so I quickly got everyone and everything put away and settled down for the evening. Was delighted to see our neighbors with the generator had packed up and left, so I'm looking forward to a quiet night and a good night sleep tonight!

Didn't have the best night sleep last night, not sure why, but slept a little late because of it. Got up about 8:30 to hungry horses, had breakfast with Hubby, then decided to get in a ride before his dialysis session. There was rain in the forecast for this afternoon, and considering how muddy so many of the trails are already, I figured I better get a ride in before they get any worse. I saddled up Flash and headed out, having planned to do the purple trail to the orange trail in a loop. Of course, I got lost at the first intersection. I thought I left on a red trail, but when I got to the bottom, the trees were blazed in white. I couldn't quite figure out how that happened, but at the creek there was a sign that said I was at Marker B. From there I was supposed to take the red trail that I thought I was on straight to the purple trail, but since I believed I was on the white trail, and there were two red trails and two white trails marked at the intersection, I couldn't figure out which red trail I was supposed to take. Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe, I picked a red trail, which was a nice trail, but never ran into the purple trail, and in fact, came out at the entrance to the day parking area at the camp! What the heck! Whatever. I decided to do the trail in reverse since that was closer, so I headed south on the orange trail and followed that until I got to a place where the orange trail seemed to fork. Hmmm, not on the map. I finally figured out that one fork went to a kiosk and the other along the road. I couldn't find any markings, except that it appeared that the orange trail continued past the kiosk. Purple had to be along the road, but I went down a hundred yards, didn't see any markings, turned around because I thought I must be wrong, and THEN, FINALLY, saw a purple blaze on a tree going in the opposite direction. Guess I was on the right track after all. Since we were going on a gravel road, though, I stopped to put on Flash's boots, then headed down that way for a while. Then we came to more purple blazes that went into a deep wood, so the trails were particularly mucky, and what appeared to be a trail along the utility line that paralleled it, which was mostly dry. We opted for the dry route, hoping it wouldn't get too far from the purple mud. Fortunately, it didn't, it crossed over purple again later. When we reacquired the purple trail, it was sloppy downhill for quite a ways, and of course, Flash lost a boot, so we had to stop on the hill and I had to go back and retrieve it. He was a little antsy, but not as much as usual, and I left both boots off and kept going. That ended up on a road that went through a neighborhood of log cabins. I hadn't realized the trail would become road, but the blazes were still there, so I kept following it. Eventually, back on the trail again, we ended up back at the same Marker B at the creek. Since I remembered which trail we came down, and which trail we took up the wrong way, it was easy to get back to camp, using the shortest distance, which was the one we came down, of course. A bit longer, later and muddier than I had planned, but we made it, nine miles! There was a line of other people washing down their horses at the one spigot that you connect a hose to, so I had to wait awhile before I could get Flash washed down, but he was soon on his highline and I was soon getting ready for Hubby's dialysis. The session went well, we started watching an old John Wayne film neither of us could remember seeing before, and then the storms moved in. Boy, did it storm! Rain, wind, even hail for awhile was knocking on the roof and awning! Fortunately this awning with the weight of the screen room doesn't seem to be bothered much by the wind, so other than rain running off the awning and under the grass carpet, we had no problems. The electric flashed out for a moment, but I had already put the inverter on, so it transferred immediately and we had no loss of power at all, thank goodness, though I did have to restart the washer and dryer, as I was doing laundry today, too. Busy day! Had dinner, Hubby went to bed early, and I did some writing on my blog, though I can't upload it right away, as evidently the cell phone tower doesn't have power or has some other mechanical problem, as there is now zero cell phone reception at the moment. Now all I can do is take a quick shower and head off to bed! Good, though tiring, day!!

Hubby had been telling me for days now that he intended to ride once we arrived here, but I didn't realize he meant that he wanted to do that even before I had a chance to explore the trails! But I'm not going to deprive him, if he's feeling up to it, then we go! After breakfast I got the horses saddled up, and we had decided in a previous conversation that he might be better suited to ride Apollo than Flash. Since I hadn't ridden Flash in more than a week, and he still needed constant guidance on the trails (i.e. He needed to be steered around practically every tree because he still hasn't engaged the thinking side of his brain), and Apollo had reminded me last week of how beautifully well-behaved he was on the trails, we just agreed it was a better fit, even though his height made it a bit more challenging. But with the picnic tables in our campsite, Hubby was able to climb up on the bench of the table, and from there, with just a little help from me, he was able to climb on while Apollo stood as still as a stone (another advantage over Flash, we're still working on the standing still part of the equation). Upon the suggestion of our neighbors, we headed south on the orange trail, crossing the quiet road we came in on and before long, we found ourselves heading downhill for quite a long while. The footing was quite muddy, and there was some slipping going on, and unfortunately, going downhill is the most painful position for Hubby and his weak legs and back, so we only went about a mile before he said he's had enough and we turned around and went back uphill, which fortunately, doesn't hurt him anywhere near as much, so he was okay by the time we got back to camp. Apollo jogged and even cantered a couple of steps, so it was a good ride (albeit short) for Hubby's first day out since April. He even managed to dismount straight to the ground without hardly any help from me! It was a little less than an hour, but it was a great first step, and one we can build on. After all, his muscles have atrophied so much in the last year, it's bound to take some time to get stronger again. Once I put the horses back on their highline, I got all the supplies for his dialysis, and we spent the afternoon dialyzing and watching old movies. This place has full bars of 4G on Verizon, so Prime and Netflix are a breeze this week! Yay! Had a nice salad for dinner and we settled down to our usual evening activities.

It seemed cooler to me this morning, so I decided to take a short ride on Apollo before the heat of the day built up. There was a very short loop, just over two miles that I wanted to try, because I thought it might be a good one for Hubby if we come back here some time. Turned out to be quite perfect for that, most of the grades were quite manageable, most of the trail was dirt and mud, though it did come out on the road (with no signage as to which way to turn, except in 50 feet a sign that said "No Horses, $100 fine." Obviously I turned around when I saw that, and quickly realized that I was just beyond the entrance to the horse camp, so I headed back there on the road. Less than an hour, but when I got back to camp there were 4 or 5 livestock trailers with riders saddling up to get out on the trail. Lola was busy training one of the kids how to throw for her, but I let her be while I put Apollo away (he was brilliant again today, of course!) We started Hubby early on dialysis so we could enjoy an earlier evening, and I'm happy to say it all went pretty well today, with only a little bit of low blood pressure problems, which is our biggest concern. I packed up a few things in preparation for our departure tomorrow (as much as I could stand in the heat), and we kept the air conditioning going most of the evening, since we knew we had enough propane to last the night. Looking forward to moving north, though, as we are in search of 70 degrees, not 90. Unfortunately, we left home about a month too late this year because of all the work we had to do on the house to get it ready for sale. Not going to happen again!!!