Hi Sweetie!
Had a wonderful night sleep last night, so quiet even though I had a couple of neighbors move in last night, not a peep! Probably too cold, it was forecast to go down to the 30's but I'm not sure it got that low. Lots of sunshine this morning, and even though I thought it might be too cold to ride today, by noon it was into the 60's so I thought I'd better make hay while the sun shines, as they say! After a late breakfast and some more computer work in the morning, I saddled up Flash. I had come up with a route that would follow most of the perimeter of the park, and off we went! Other than the climb out of camp, of which there are half a dozen ways to go, they all end up on a road at the top of the hill and everything goes off from there. Since the only map I have is of the roads here (no horse trail map at all!), I did follow mostly roads, which were predominantly gravel and dirt. Sometimes there was enough of an easement along the side to get off the road, but most of the time there wasn't. Flash wasn't happy about the footing, and kept trying to get off the gravel, even though he had boots on. Every road looks pretty much the same here, and there are no special destinations like waterfalls or caves or overlooks, pretty boring actually. I finally did find a trail that was nice for a while, a double track along the edge of a newly growing forest, but eventually that turned into practically a swamp, and all torn up by the ATV's, a real mess. That came to a stop when I reached a creek in a deep ravine where the bridge had completely collapsed. I can't believe this park is so poorly maintained! No crossing the bridge, not even as a pedestrian. I tried to find a way around it, but had to turn back, then I went to the left of the bridge and about 30 yards down I found what looked like it might work as a horse crossing, but it was a pretty steep drop into a narrow ravine, a quick turn, then up the other side. It reminded me of how we used to get into Hungryland before they built the landbridge there, only much narrower. Anyway, it took some persuading to get Flash to go down there, he was not very willing, but finally he went down, turned, and climbed the other side. See, the original four-wheel drive! It was pretty swampy on the other side, too, but we eventually got back on the trail and it ended up on the road, as I knew it eventually would. We came across a big tree across the road after that, and I thought Flash would just step over it, but at the last second he decided to leap it from a standstill! Fortunately, even though I wasn't really ready, I managed to stay on. It wasn't long after that we got back to camp. My original plan was for about 7.5 miles, but it ended up being closer to 13.5 because I made a mistake on my plan, but no big deal, longer is better for Flash anyway. We still managed to do it in about 3 hours, so a good ride. Of course, Lola came along, and she got good and muddy, as did Flash, and, too, frankly. I let the horses graze on the clover outside their electric fence for awhile while I downloaded my GPS info, did a Facebook video (something I've started just for fun, don't know if anybody's interested, but I thought I'd give it a try), then read my Kindle book while the I kept an eye on the horses. After almost two hours, it started getting chilly, so I put the horses back on the highline and fed them, did the rest of the chores, showered early, watched a couple of DS9s, and now I'm heading to bed. It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow so I'll probably take Apollo out for a bit, then we have rain coming in on Monday, naturally! That's okay, time to do some indoor chores, like maybe doing my taxes! Btw, my eye was much better this morning, and by the end of the day it felt almost back to normal. I hate those eye cuts, they hurt like a bandit, but they do tend to heal fast! Well, that's all the news, so good night, my love!
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