Wednesday, September 13, 2023 – First Ride at Youngs Creek, IN

Hey Darlin’!
Another goodnight sleep, so happy to be on the end of a quiet, dead end road! Took our first ride today, not exactly the one I had planned, but the trails here aren’t very well marked, so it’s not too surprising. We ended up going about 7.5 miles, so it was fine. We started off without boots, but we kept running into small pea gravel, so I ended up putting them on just to keep Flash from getting ouchy. I should have put his breast collar on, and will from now on, because there were a few good hills, and I expect more on the other trails we didn’t get to today. Heavy deciduos forest here, with some trails not very well maintained, but quite beautiful. There’s only about 12 miles total here, but they wrap around in a couple of figure 8 loops, so I can get creative on future rides. Before we left, a forest service guy, Fred, showed up and tried to tell me all the nonsensical reasons they don’t have threads on the spigots here, but in the end, he rigged up a hose end and clamped it onto the pipe so now I can run my hose. He also told me I needed a trail pass, so I got on and bought a one-day pass for $5, but then after I did that, he told me that the trail pass was necessary for every day I was here, whether I rode on the trail or not! Their website and the national website are in total conflict with each other. The national site repeatedly says there’s no fee here, and nothing about a trail fee either. The Hoosier forest website says there’s no fee to camp here either, but it does say something about a trail fee, then refers you to another paragraph on the next page, which also says a trail fee, but then says if you have a horse at the horse camp, there’s a fee, too. It’s not very clear that the trail fee and the horse fee in camp are the same, but evidently they are. So there’s no fee at the horse camp, unless you bring a horse, then there’s a fee. It’s all very confusing, really poorly communicated. Anyway, I had to go back on and buy an annual pass for $35, which, if I had gotten in the first place, would have saved me the first five bucks. Oh, well, it’s still cheap to stay here, and now that I have easy access to water, I’m a happier camper. There’s beautiful weather forecast for the rest of the week, and I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of the trails here. After we got back from the ride, I let the horses graze again, Apollo on a long line and Flash wherever he wanted to go, which is never too far, though he started down the road again, just about ten yards, then wisely turned around and came back. There’s only one other non-horse camper here, but there were two trailers of day riders here, which rather surprised me, being the middle of the week. Did some bookkeeping work on the computer, linking my old brokerage account to my new one (TD Ameritrade was bought out by Schwab), so that took some time. Settled down for the evening, had a nice dinner, finally managed to be able to watch some less interrupted TV (off and on), and soon off to shower and bed! Love you, sweetie! Good night!