Caney Mountain Day 5 Roary Rim

On Monday, the forecast for today was that it was going to be the coldest day of the week. It turned out to be one of the nicest days. It was chilly but sunny and did get about 40°. It was the usual routine of getting up, taking care of Lily and cleaning her pen. Then breakfast at the dining hall. There has been bread pudding offered for a couple mornings and it's good! It was hard to decide what to wear today. It was cold this morning we knew it would warm up quite a  bit. Layers are always the best bet. I told Amy last night that I expected Lily to start feeling a bit tired by today but I was wrong. Lily was excited to get going this morning. I almost forgot to make a lunch today and quickly made one at the last minute for both Amy and myself as I'd not seen her down at JoJo's trailer where our food was. We were ready to ride at 9:30 and decided to go with Lynn again. He was riding to Roary Rim today. It was another challenging ride. We rode to a palace where we took a break that had a lovely view. The trail to this spot was a bit butt puckery. There was as drop through a crack in a rock. Lily did not like the look of the crack so decided to take an epic leap off the rock to the trail below. Thankfully I felt it coming and stayed in the saddle. She actually made the jump quite smoothly. She has been getting better every day with negotiating this rough terrain. We tied up the mules and horses and sat and enjoyed the view and the sunshine.

We continued on towards Roary Rim. On a trail riding along the edge of a rim, with the drop on our right hand side, Lily put her left front leg in a hole that we didn't see as it was covered in leaves. She went down and I went over her head. Thankfully, I went over the left side of her head and rolled onto a large flat moss covered rock. I was not hurt at all but laid there for a minute. Lily was up and standing still at first and I was looking over her legs scared that she might have been hurt in the fall. I had her reins still and think I was pulling on her head a bit as she started to move off. I held the reins and she circled half way around the rock I was on so I got up and stopped her. I looked her over and she seemed to be fine so I mounted back up and we were on our way.

We had lunch at Roary Rim. There was  a spectacular view from this spot and we enjoyed it. As we were riding into this spot, the group JoJo was riding with was getting ready to leave.  JoJo's group rode out the way we came in. We asked Lynn if we would be riding back the same way and he said on for about 5 minutes on the same trail. I had been worried about riding back through were Lily had put her leg in the hole. But neither Amy and I could think of a spot where you could ride down off the rim that close to where we were. Just about then, Lynn pointed out where you could see JoJo's group dropping down off the rim and it looked like an impossible spot. Yikes! We sat and enjoyed the sunshine as long as we could. We mounted back up and headed down the trail and sure enough when we came to the spot where we dropped down off the ledge it was a bit of an adrenaline rush! As we were descending, Amy's words were, "who the heck was the first person that saw this spot and though, Gee, this would make a good trail!". We all made it safely to the bottom and rode down to the cabins we'd been looking down on from the top of the rim. Lily for some reason was kind of hyped up after lunch. The mule I thought would be tired today.

We rode though Big Creek multiple times on the way back to camp. One of the horses in our group wanted to lay down every time he stepped into water so she had to gallop in across ever crossing to keep him on his feet. Lily settled down after a while and finished the ride like a good girl. We saw quite a few twisted and broken off cedar trees though one section of the trail. Lynn said a tornado had gone through Friday night. We were sure glad we'd missed that by arriving on Saturday. It was a strange thing for December. Once back in camp, I stopped at Jojo's trailer to take Lily's saddle off as we'd been doing every day. She was very quite at the moment so I decided I could let her stand without tying her while I put her saddle on the saddle rack in the trailer. Well, that turned into a big ground tying fail. With an audience of course. Nothing too bad, Lily just wandered off in the direction of the spot I'd been letting her roll every day and got both front legs through her reins. That didn't really bother her much and she was easily caught. And I did have to let her roll of course. I then settled her in her pen with water, hay and fed her as it was late enough to do so. Lily is starting to get a little attached to Mattie Ross so called for her a few times. Amy and I sat on the porch in front of our room to enjoy the last of the sunshine. Brooke and her husband arrived today. I've ridden with her before out of High Knob. They had the room next to ours and sat out and we chatted for a while. When we went down to supper, I slipped on the steps and fell down the last 3 or 4. It must be my lucky day for soft landing and I was unharmed in this unplanned dismount also. Tonight's supper featured meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, green beans, biscuits, salad and a few other things and the usual delicious deserts. After supper, I went out to check on Lily one last time before heading to bed. I have been watching the weather and it was looking like there was a storm coming in Friday night into Saturday with a significant snowfall.
We talked things over with Jojo and decided if the forecast did not change, we would leave on Friday morning to get out ahead of the storm.