Today, the forecast was perfect! After yesterday's drizzle, today was a beautiful, sunny day, with temps in the low 70's. I planned a 12 mile ride today, and Hubby was in agreement, in fact, we ended up going closer to 13. We headed west again, this time turning north. Not long after that, we had a group of 8 or 10 riders catch up to us on the trail, chattering away like people always seem to do in groups, so we gave up any hope of sneaking up on any elk. We let them pass, as they were going faster than us, then we passed them again when they got to an intersection and couldn't figure out which way to go. I wasn't sure either, but my trusty GPS let me know we had to turn right, so we headed out while they were still analyzing maps. We lost our way once, when we missed a turn and ended up on a pipeline, but the beauty of a GPS is that it let's us know when we're off track, and how to get back on track again! Plus we heard the chatty group go by not far away, so it was easy to find the trail. Eventually they got far enough ahead where we couldn't hear them any more. The trails, again, were very nice, though we hit one bad muddy spot where both of Apollo's boots got pulled off, but I retrieved them and just tied them to my saddle, as the trail wasn't rocky enough to worry about them. I vowed to wash them and put them on again before hitting any bad gravel, which I eventually was able to do. The "horse watering" spots that were marked on the map weren't exactly well marked on the trail, one was barely a puddle we passed by before we realized that's what it was. The second one was an actual creek crossing, so the horses got a drink there, though we had also watered them at a creek by the road a bit earlier. We stayed mostly on the horse trails, but at one point elected to take an "administrative road," which looked like it may have been an old logging road, and was quite beautiful, but unmaintained. As a result, we had to circumvent a lot of trees that had fallen across the road, but this wasn't difficult. It would have been a brilliant trail if someone had opted to clean it up a bit, not sure why they haven't. That was really the only challenging bit, the rest was quite straightforward. Another gorgeous ride, and Hubby (and little Billy) made it without any problem. Obviously, we're building our stamina up again, yeah! A gorgeous day, absolutely perfect weather, no drama, a great day!
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