Ride in Litchfield with Joanie

Today my friend Joanie and I made plans to ride together. She picked up Louie and me at 9:00 am. It was a warm and muggy day. Cloudy when we first started out but the sun was out by the end of the ride. Louie wasn't sure he wanted to get on Joanie's trailer. It's a straight load stock trailer with a ramp. We went up to the Litchfield Fairgrounds and parked. We were going to do some exploring today. Louie was even more reluctant to unload then he was to load. He's mostly been in slant load trailers and that is my only guess on his reluctance to back out. So, we unloaded Joanie's horse, Frannie, first and then Louie decided he would back off. We first headed out on some trails that Susie, Barbara and I had found but not explored a few weeks ago. The trails were very nice but there really wasn't much of them. We came out on the Pine Tree road. We were just standing on the side of the road trying to decide which way we wanted to go. A woman came out of a house across the street from where we were and asked us if she could help us. She did not say this in a helpful tone of voice. We said we were just exploring trails and she quickly informed us there were no trails around here. And her tone of voice did not sound very friendly. Well, we knew this was not quite true as we'd just come off a trail that was posted as a public trail. Oh well, we thanked her for her "help" and headed off down the road.

We rode down the Pine Tree road back to the Plains Rd. and to the Fairgrounds. I figured we might as well ride some trails I did know. They are very nice trails but I seldom ride them as they dead end at a bad bridge in a swampy area. We can't cross the bridge or swamp so it's an "up and back" ride. I hadn't ridden this trail in a few years so I was in hopes that the bridge might have been replaced. Joanie and I took turns leading. I took a couple wrong turns but never got too far off. Most of the trail is on snowmobile trail. Part of it runs along a pipe line. On the pipe line the snowmobile trail goes through a swampy spot. This is not a problem as there is a nice trail that goes around this. This trail is about 1/2 mile long. It goes up a hill and at the top is someones house. The trail picks up again on the other side of this persons lawn. There were some people outside so we asked if them minded us riding along the edge of their lawn. They said it was ok but didn't look thrilled about it. So, I headed across the edge of the lawn in the lead with Louie. He had been nice a quite so far on the ride. But, here is is walking sideways looking all bug eyed at the brush the edge of the woods. I'm trying NOT to leave any more tracks then necessary so I told Joanie to go out in the lead so Louie would hopefully walk STRAIGHT instead of sideways across the lawn. That was fine until we were 3/4 of the way across and Louie spooked at who knows what and danced right across their lawn! Sigh.......

We got out to the bridge and unfortunately it had not been replaced. It was actually worse then ever with big gaping holes in it. But, with the size of the holes in the bridge, I would think that it would soon be replaced as I can't imagine the snowmobiles liking it either. We headed back and when we were once again on the trail that bypasses the swamp on the pipeline, we were trotting along and Louie threw out a little buck! He's never bucked with me before! It was just one buck and very small. And, it was quite smooth so didn't unseat me at all. He didn't seem to be bothered by anything so I think it was just an "I feel good" hop. Silly mule. I got after him big time anyway and let him know my opinion on anything that even resembles a buck.

We got back to the trailer with no further excitement. It was a very nice ride and so much fine to get together with Joanie and her wonderful mare Frannie.