Mother's Day Ride

It was a beautiful day today. It was in the low 80's but low humidity so very comfortable. Today I joined up with Cathy and Anthony again. Lily was a bit fussy about loading into the trailer but only fussed for a few minutes. She was pretty good about being saddled up. I led her down to Anthony's as I figured they likely weren't ready yet. I was right so I tied Lily to Anthony's trailer and sat down to relax for a bit. It wasn't long before they were ready and we headed out. It was just the three of us today. We rode out the back of the camp and went south and then east on a trail I don't think I've been on before. We were heading to Double M Campground and meeting some of his family for lunch there. Lily was very good today other than stumbling and doing a face plant once. We rode through to Initial Tree and stopped to take a break there. Then on to Double M. We rode 9.48 miles from High Knob to Double M.

I'd had Anthony call Fred to see if he wanted to join us. Fred hadn't answered so Anthony left a message. When we got to Double M, Fred was there and I was pleased he'd come to join us. Cathy and I gave Fred quite the show as Anthony rode off to talk with someone as we were crossing the parking area and neither Lily or Cathy's mule LuLu wanted to be separated from Anthony's mule. We had all we could do to get either mule to walk to the hitching rails and I managed to get a horrid cramp in my leg from trying to get Lily to go! BRAT! Fred thought it was pretty funny. Anthony's mom and dad were coming as well as his daughter, son-in-law and their two young girls. So, we had quite a group for lunch! Any time with Anthony and Cathy's family is a good time. I think we were at Double M. for nearly 2 hrs. Lily wasn't overly impressed at being tied to the hitching rail that long but she wasn't bad either. Just a little fidgety.

We took a different route back to High Knob. Lily got sticky feet at a couple intersections on the trail that she knew led back home but again, didn't make any big fuss. We stopped for a break at NoNo Rock. I was playing around with Lily but not really asking her to do any big jumps. Anthony said he could show me an easy way to get Lily to go up on one of the rocks so I handed Lily over to him. Lily gave him a run for his money but he did get her to put two front feet up on a rock. We then rode back to camp. We rode 9.01 miles on the way back for a total of 9.49 miles. Lily loaded right into the trailer for the ride home.