Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019 – Day Two of the OTL Ride

Another early start today. With the condition of the road at JW Corbett, it actually took us longer to travel there than to Dupuis, even though it's a much shorter distance as the crow flies. Much more relaxed today, as we have no dialysis to race to, in fact, there's nothing but this to do, so I plan on taking my time and enjoying it more. I left camp with a couple of other ladies who were organizers, and rode along a well-marked (by Corbett) trail for a long way. I finally moved off from them when they stopped to solve a shoe-loss problem (they were nice, but a bit chattier than I am comfortable with for long stretches-no offense!), and rode with just one other girl for a while. Lots of water to cross, lots of wading, then a nice canter as we pulled into the conservation camp, where a lot of people stopped for lunch. I kept going down the canal until we reached the Beeline Highway crossing, and half a dozen of us crossed at once. There wasn't anyone stopping traffic, though there were a couple of folks at the checkpoint there. There were enough gaps to make it through okay. Eventually we got into Loxahatchee Slough, where I caught up with a cowboy and his girlfriend who weren't afraid of moving out, so we did some nice cantering and trotting (for me, cordo and largo), a refreshing change from everyone else who apparently only wanted to walk the entire 21+ miles. As soon as we broke through the forest on to the canal trail on the north side of Loxahatchee Slough, which Flash knew VERY well, I could really tell he suddenly knew where he was, and knew the way home from there (even though that's not where we were going this time), but he picked up his tempo and we did a lot of moving out after that. We finally settled down for the last mile or so through the neighborhood, arriving at our end point of the Jupiter Farms Park near the arena. Hubby had already arrived, tucked away in a corner, and after checking in (I was first in camp again, just like yesterday, where I heard it was nearly an hour before anyone else arrived after me), and once again, trailered home, this time just a short ten minute drive, with a stop at Publix for essentials like ice cream :-). Got home much earlier than last night, thank goodness, and had a relaxing evening, though off to bed early, of course!

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