Relieved that it was a nice quiet morning, no rangers rousting us out of bed, had a good breakfast did a quick load of laundry, then soon we were out on the trail. There are a number of loops, none of them terribly long, and because this is a wide open park, you can pretty much see the campground from anywhere in the park, so it's just a matter of deciding how long you want to ride. We headed out on the trail nearest the road, though we missed the actual trailhead by going out on a service road, but we soon found our way over, then went to near the north end of the park, then looping back. We saw several other riders out on the trail, including one guy riding a very leggy black horse that he was riding with only his legs (his arms were out to each side), and a couple of girls were in the arena. On the way back we had a long straight away, so we decided to have a canter, but for some reason, after a few strides, Apollo did his little rodeo routine, more so than he's done in a long time, and I ended up in the sand. I decided to work with him the arena when we got back, which I did, but every time I tried to get him into a canter, he started jumping up on me, to the point where I was starting to get too panicky every time we tried, so I was probably exacerbating the problem with my nervousness. We finally quit, unsaddled them and headed over to a nice wash rack they had here, for their first bath in I can't remember how long, and they seemed grateful. They've been so dusty lately, we just had to do something. After scraping them down and letting them dry, we finally put them back in their corrals. I think tomorrow I'll take Apollo out to the arena again and see if we can't make some improvements in his behavior, or my riding, whichever is needed!
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