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.