Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 – Second (and last) Ride at Honey Creek

Slept good and late again (as we have for the last few days), so after brunch we saddled up and headed out, this time back tracking the first part of our last ride, leaving by the outhouses. We bundled up, though, as the temps were only in the fifties, and it was pretty cloudy and damp. I thought I heard a little rain this morning, so we were a little worried about the trail conditions, but this may be our last chance to ride, so we headed out anyway. We quickly took a shortcut, though, we’ve discovered the “side” trails are actually just as good, and in some cases better than the main trails, as the lighter traffic sometimes made the trails less slippery. We didn’t want to take too long a ride today, as we have a long week ahead of us next week, so after the first shortcut, we just followed the A/Red trail all around the north side of the park, often getting so close to the freeway we could not only hear it, but see it as well. There are several stretches of trail that they’ve put stone down, obviously to ameliorate the slippage problem, but the stones are HUGE, not like gravel at all, just stone from a riverbed or something, mostly about 8-12 inches in diameter, so the horses didn’t like them much. It’s only marginally better than mud, but that could be a close call! Passed by a really huge old oak tree, 300 years old at least, judging by the diameter of the trunk. Anyway, it was a short ride, under four miles, but we did manage to canter once or twice on some ridges through open fields where it was dry enough. Got back to camp, put everyone out to graze again, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.