To Blue Hole and Beyond

 Another perfect day for a ride! I've been hearing tales since I've been here about Loretta Wheeler, the woman who likes to ride all day, and that I'd enjoy riding with her. Today we finally managed to coordinate our schedules and we made plans to ride together. It is indeed true that Loretta is not afraid to put in some miles and we had the most wonderful ride! Loretta has a permanent camp at Double M. Campground. We arranged to meet at her camp at 9:00 AM.

I decided to walk Lily to Double M. It's only 1.5 miles from the barn to Double M. Too close to bother hitching up the trailer. I got to the barn early and fed the animals. Lily was a bit cranky when I saddled her up but quickly got into the spirit of a new adventure. I led her her to Double M. She is getting to be very polite on the lead line. She snorked at a few things and hesitated twice thinking she might turn around. But, just a verbal cue to walk on worked to keep her moving. When we got to the camp, we easily found Loretta's trailer. I was a little early and she was close to being ready to ride. I tied Lily to her trailer while she saddled up and met the lovely buckskin foxtrotter mare that Loretta was riding. The two got along very well. We were heading out to the trail right on time.

Loretta and her mare led the way most of the morning. We had to stop once early in the ride to do an emergency tack repair when a snap on Loretta's breast collar broke. She had a spare snap with her so we were soon on our way again. We went by the stone cabin and by Blue Hole on to Haystack Rock where we stopped for lunch. It's a real pretty spot and we enjoyed soaking up some late fall sunshine and talking about trail conservation work. In Maine, efforts to unite equestrians to work on preserving and maintaining trails had been very unsuccessful.Here in the Shawnee National Forest, there are multiple organizations to be joined that work trails and advocate for equestrian use of trails.  

 After lunch, we rode by the "A" frame cabin. Both cute and somewhat creepy. I would love to have seen it when it was in good condition, I'm sure it was really cute. Loretta ride with her 3 dogs. Lily is good about dogs around her when riding so that was no problem. But when we were climbing out of one of the creek beds, one of the dogs darted in front of Lily and stopped. Lily went right over the top of him and must have stepped on him. He rolled to the side of the trail and  cried and whimpered holding a front leg up and gave us quite a scare. After a bit, he got up and started walking around. He limped at first but then seemed to walk it off or the most part, with just a very minor limp. After crossing Karbers Ridge Rd. We came across the carcass of a deer laying beside the trail. This kind of freaked out Loretta's horse and she didn't want to walk by it. I asked Lily to go by and she never hesitated and barely gave the carcass a glance and we led for a little while at that point.

We rode back to Double M Campground and rode over to to new covered arena that is under construction. And exciting new project underway by the camp. There will be an event center also so I'm looking forward to some interesting events being held so near where I live. Riding back to camp from the arena construction site, we crossed though a creek and into a large open field. And we came up the the hill out of the creek into the field, Lily got a little excited and jumped around in play a few times. A quick correction and she stopped and behaved herself across the field. We had over 15 miles in at this point and Lily was not in the least bit tired yet.

We stopped by Loretta's camp and she dropped off her dogs. Then she rode with me back to Black's Cabin. When we got there, we found Sally and Josh driving their big team in the field. Delbert was behind them in his truck. He'd come out to see how the team was doing and took a turn driving them around the field. Lily was fascinated by the team, Loretta's horse was curious and a little worried about. Her curiosity won out in the end. From Black's cabin, I headed home. Lily didn't hesitate separating from Loretta's horse though since we were heading home, she wasn't likely to fuss anyway. Loretta rode back to Double M. It was the first time she'd ridden her mare alone. When I saw her later, she said her mare did very well. We rode 20 miles today. Lily's longest ride to date and she could have easily done more. It was a great ride.

To Initial Tree with Del

It was a lovely day today and I had not really made any efforts to find someone to ride with. So, it seemed a good day to strike off on my own for my first solo ride with Lily. I headed over to the barn and told Del I was going to head out to Initial tree. Well, turns out Del wanted to get out for a ride also so I happily scrapped my idea of a solo ride. I can do that anytime. It's always fun riding with Del. He said he would like to ride to Initial tree as I'd originally planned and he let me lead the way. I DO know how to get to Initial tree by I'll admit that my original plan to take the most direct route there did not work out quite as I planned. However, I did get us there. There is a tricky spot on trail 185 right now where there is a downed tree. Someone had cut a spot in the tree to go though but it's narrow and there is nowhere at the spot to get around it at all with a drop off on one side and a steep hill on the other. Lily being tall helped, I was able to lift my leg over the high side of the log and squeeze through. Delbert made it also but banged his leg on the log.  There were quite a few people at Initial Tree when we arrived. We stopped and chatted with a few people then headed back. I took us a different route back and once again did not manage to take the most direct route. We rode about 6.5 miles. Lily was a very good girl and Delbert's mare is always good. We had a very nice ride.

Thanksgiving Day Ride

This morning Fred and I went with Delbert and Ruth to Galatia to a public Thanksgiving dinner. Delbert and Fred had gone there last year and said it was good. They were right, it was a very nice meal and we enjoyed ourselves. When we got home, Delbert wanted to go out for a ride as it was a lovely day. So, we decided to sneak in a quick ride as we didn't have a lot of daylight hours left. We just rode out trail 184, dropped down to the creek and came back around to Blacks Cabin. About 3.5 miles. Though it was a short ride, it was so nice to get out on such a lovely day. 

To Bee or not to Bee...

Today I headed over to High Knob to ride with Anthony. It was warm today but overcast and sprinkled a little but nothing to discourage riding. It rained yesterday so Lily was one very dirty mule. It took a bit of grooming to get her to sort of off white. I decided that any real white was not not a realistic goal for today. Lily was good about loading into the trailer and we got to camp around 9:45am. Lily was quiet when I saddled her up, no fussing at all. I went down to Anthony's camp and tied Lily to his trailer to wait for the group to get ready to ride. It was a while and Lily stood quietly the whole time. I was impressed with how patient she was.

There were 5 of us riding. When we headed out Lily was excited to get going but settled in easily in the 4th position. Lily has gotten very good about adjusting her pace to the equine in front of her. I only have to give her occasionally reminders to not crowd them. We here headed to Rice Hollow and rode by the spring and Cowboy Hideout.

We crossed High Knob Rd and I asked Lily to take the lead there. She gave a little protest but it was over the direction of travel, not over taking the lead. But it was just a head shake and hesitation. A bump with my heals and verbal correction and we headed off up the trail. We got up to a spot where there is a big rock the mule riders like to play around on. The more brave mule riders that is. It's quite a big jump up onto the rock. Anthony was riding Inca, a smaller mule and didn't want to ask her to jump up on the rock with him on her but asked me, as Lily is a big girl, if she would jump up there with me on. I knew Lily would not be all that excited about jumping up there with or without me and I was not inclined to try. Anthony got off Inca and climbed up on the rock and she jumped up after him. He got back down and asked again if I wanted to try Lily out on the rock even just leading her up there. He said he would help me get her up. I hesitated because I knew it would probably take a while to get Lily up on that rock and I didn't want to hold up the people I was riding with. But as usual, I did not listen to the voice of reason in my head and hopped off Lily. Anthony climbed back up on the rock and took Inca up with him knowing Lily would be more willing if another mule was up there. I handed him her lead rope and he asked her to hop up. She was much more willing to try than I expected but really wasn't sure how to handle it. She kept rearing up trying to figure out where to put her feet but just couldn't decide. She'd get back on all four feet and swing her hind end around trying to find another way to get up or just get around. She did this maneuver 8 or 9 times when suddenly she pinned her ears back flat and started shaking her head. She didn't pull past the end of the lead rope though. I though, "wow, she's really getting mad about this," when she then started kicking up at her belly when someone yelled it was bees. Sure enough, I saw Lily was being swarmed by bees and amazingly she did not panic or blow up or even pull away from Anthony. Anthony tossed the lead rope to me and I caught it and I turned to run with Lily. Unfortunately Lily and I went in opposite directions around a tree. The only way to keep hold of her was to pull her around the tree back into the bees or for me to run into the bees to get around the tree so I chose to let go of the lead rope and hope to catch it on the other side. I didn't catch it and off Lily went down the trail back in the direction of camp.

Anthony jumped on Inca and went in pursuit of Lily. That got the rest of the mules excited as they all wanted to follow Lily and Inca. There was a brief scramble to get mules secured and settled down. Once that was done, I headed down the trail on foot after Anthony. I figured if he got Lily, I would save him having to lead her all the way back. If he did not get her, I'd have to walk out that way anyway. I hadn't gone far when here comes Anthony down the trail with Lily in tow. I sure was relieved to them!! He told me Lily had gotten out to the road and some people hauling a horse trailer saw her and stopped to catch her. By the time Anthony got there, he said there was 4 or 5 trailers backed up down the road as they tried to figure out what to do with Lily. They were of course worried someone had been thrown and hurt. Anthony assured them that was not the case. He told them that a bear had jumped us and Lily had attacked the bear to save our lives and chased it off. Leave it to Anthony to come up with something like that. In any case, Though my brand new lead rope was a bit scuffed up, Lily was none the worse for the wear so I mounted up and we continued on with our ride. The rest of the ride went without incident and we had a great time. From Rice Hollow we rode up to the Tee Pee and then by Whiskey cave. It was the first time in the Shawnee for this group of riders and I still remember how I felt the first time I saw this incredibly beautiful place.

Fall Vistas