Lobo Appaloosas - Trailride

SO YOU WANT TO GO TRAILRIDING

Boy, I wish you could have been on this trailride. It was just me and Amanda (Robby's girlfriend) and we had an absolute blast. She hadn't been on a horse in over a year, and just 2 months ago, had knee surgery (torn anterior crucial ligiment and torn miniscus).
With the forecast being what it was (90% chance of rain), I figured we'd do good to get to ride much at all unless we rode in the rain, but it actually was fine. I asked if she'd rather wait for another weekend but she said she was game.
Since Amanda hadn't ridden in over a year and had recently had the knee surgery, I chose Charla for her to ride. Charla is a gentle, laid back mare that will follow on the trail. She doesn't get upset about anything and pretty much does everything in slow motion. I just weaned Charla's foal off her last week. For my mount, I chose Amy, who is bold and likes to "blaze the trail".
We stopped at TSC and bought rain slickers on the way and then went on to Paint Creek where we discovered only one other couple was as nervy? (foolish?) as us. We got camp setup and hit the trail at 5PM Saturday evening. We rode the middle North trail - 6.7 miles. I figured since I'd ridden the other north trails, we might as well try that one and see something new. Shortly after leaving camp, we came to the perfectly restored Pioneer Farm, which is a sight well worth seeing. It is like riding into the clearing and being back in time 100 years ago. This is a complete homestead, equipped with barn, spring house, turkey and goose house, outhouse, and several other buildings.

Hmmm, well, a few snorts and a sheepish look later, we were on our way again. Before long, we found this wonderful patch of ripe blackberries, juicy and sweet. Amanda has a thing for blackberries and wanted to stop and pick a few. She kept trying to nudge Charla sideways to within easy reach, but Charla had decided that if Amanda was picking them, they must be worth a sniff and the next thing we knew, Charla closed her eyes and buried her face among the briars, sniffing out berries and eating them with obvious delight. Of course, with her nosed into the patch, it didn't make it that easy for Amanda to reach them, especially since Charla was "closer" to them. But she did manage to get a few. Berry picking done, we went on and made it back to camp about an hour before dark. It never even misted on us so the slickers stayed in the saddle bags. I built a nice campfire and Amanda fixed salads while I roasted the hotdogs. We sat there and enjoyed the fire and chatted. Funny, I never figured I could find so much to talk with an 18 year old about, but we really get along great and really did have a great time.
Saturday night, we were sitting there watching the fire and listening to the horses munch on hay. Remember, this is primitive camping with no electric, so it's pretty dark. All of a sudden, we heard something that sounded like a cross between a hiss and a snort out in the dark to the left of our camp. I asked Amanda "What the heck was that?" She said maybe one of horses. I said no - the horses were to the right. Then we heard it again and I said I'd better get the flashlight and take a look. You know how it is when it's dark and you can't identify a noise and can't see.....

So we sat there and talked some more and started getting drowsy......... when all of a sudden, we were startled again by that wierd hiss/snort noise (this cat had some serious sinus problems). No problem, we still had some left over hotdogs, so I threw him another. Like before, he snatched it and ran into the woods. Now we all know, 2 hotdogs is more than enough for ANY cat, right? So I put the rest in the cooler and settled back down. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he showed up again and when he didn't get the results he expected, he decided to check out our garbage bag. He went away disappointed. I'm pleased to say, we stood our ground and didn't run and hide in the trailer. In fact, we were so comfy sitting there in those soft Coleman camp chairs that we managed to doze off in front of the fire........ until a log burned down enough to fall down in the fire. That startled us both awake and by then Amanda decided she just HAD to go get in the bunk in the trailer. I was just too comfy and dozed back off. I woke up a while later, when it started to drizzle and moved inside.

We slept well and I woke up at 6:30 Sunday morning. I decided to let Amanda sleep for a while and thought I'd enjoy a cup of coffee. So I fired up the little propane stove and put my pot of water on to heat. I was a little disgruntled when it ran out of propane, but being the creative person that I am, I thought I'd just heat it over the campfire which was burning cheerfully. The campgrounds is equipped with fire-rings and along one edge of the fire-ring, there is grating which works wonderfully for sitting a coffee pot on. So I sat the coffee pot on to heat the water and kicked back in a camp chair to wait for it to boil. A few minutes later, another log fell and tilted the fire-ring, and there went my coffee pot of nearly heated water, sliding off the grating into the fire. Geez, what's a person got to do to have a cup of coffee? So I fished it out and washed the ash away, refilled it, and leveled the ring. That time, it stayed in place and I finally had hot water. Boy, by the time I had that pot of coffee made, it sure did taste good. Ah, this is the life! I parked myself back in front of the fire and started dozing off watching the fire burn. It's nearly hypnotic, at least to me. I dozed off and on until the other campers started breaking camp. He told me that they were packing it in, that they thought it was a washout. The sky looked threatening but I told him we'd bought raingear and were going to ride.
Before too long, the drizzle started and then Amanda woke up. I asked if she was ready for some breakfast and she assured me that she was. So I drug out the grill that we'd had made specifically for campfire cooking, a big heavy stainless steel contraption. When I started looking for the stands for it, I discovered they were nowhere to be found. Well, we had the fire-ring, so figured I'd just have to make do. I got the bacon on to cook. Boy, I was sure having to turn it fast - the grill was too close to the fire. And then the drizzle started coming down a little heavier.... make that a lot heavier. Amanda thought maybe we should hang the tarp that I'd bought in case it started raining, but I was flipping the bacon as fast as I could and didn't have time to stop at that point. Before long, I was a drowned rat, while my slicker was safely packed away in the saddle bags. Meanwhile, Amanda had drug out the tarp and when I finally was able to slip away from the grill, we managed to get it stretched out and at least had one dry place to sit. But by then, a dry place really didn't make a lot of difference to me, since I was already so wet my skin had taken on a prune-like consistency. Finally, I managed to get the eggs cooked and enjoyed sitting down under the tarp to eat breakfast. Naturally, we could only see the humor of it since everyone else had thought we were nuts. Believe it or not, we WERE having a good time. Shortly after we finished eating, the sky started clearing up somewhat and the rain stopped so the day looked more promising. Then another trailer pulled in and then another. See, we weren't the only brave souls!
By 11:30, we'd packed up most of the gear and started saddling up - after changing into dry clothes.
We finally hit the trail at noon. I asked Amanda how brave she felt - did she want to try a 3 mile trail, a 6.3 mile, or a 10 mile? Hey, we are adventurous, right, so we decided to tackle the 10 mile trail. So away we went for the longest south trail. It started off pretty boring, just riding along through mostly meadows. After a while, we saw a path down over a bank and a big concrete tank sat there with water running into it. Thinking the horses might like a drink, we rode down to it. Charla drank and Amy tried, but had trouble getting suction with the bit in her mouth. For those of you who have seen my website, Amy is our Loch Ness Monster. Well, she's not afraid of a little bit of water so dove in nearly up to her eyes. Amanda about fell off of Charla laughing at her. Finally she got done blowing bubbles and we went on. We came to a steep hill and I turned back to Amanda and told her to go easy going down because it looked slick. I headed down with Amy and about halfway down, felt my saddle start to slip to the right. I was a little suprised that it had loosened already but just stepped harder in the left stirrup to bring it back level. I told Amanda when we reached the bottom that I'd have to stop and tighten my girth. I though that I'd just tighten it where I sat instead of getting off, but when I reached down, I got the shock of my life - there was no girth there! No way, I thought! I looked again, and sure enough, there it hung loose from the right side. I stepped off and was shocked even more that it held in place. I discovered that the latigo strap had torn where the little leather went through the hole to tie it together. So I put it back with a diamond hitch. I remounted and we had quite a laugh (and believe me, I was still thanking the Guy above) for not dumping me over Amy's head as we went down that hill. Good old mutton withered Amy!
By now, I was sure it was time to relax and enjoy the ride. We rode on and came to a lovely pine forest and I was enjoying the fragrance and meandering along when all of a sudden, maybe 5 feet from us, a deer leaped into the air (and so did Amy).

I looked back and Charla had turned around and was walking back the other way. (I think she'd had enough of all this stuff)
Well, I convinced Amy that the deer was really a deer and not a grizzley bear, so we went on. After another hour or so, we came to a bend in the trail that was near the road and were able to cross the road to a little store and buy a drink. (Believe me, I was starting to need a drink by then).
We sat down there and cooled off a bit and then hit the trail again. We kept thinking that other than the deer and my girth incident, this trail was really kind of tame and at times a bit boring. But sometimes things aren't always as they might seem.
We rode on and gradually entered some rougher country and climbed up and down so many hills, we lost track of them. The horses gradually started warming up and when we spooked our 2nd deer, Amy only looked at it but went calmly on. When we came to the third one, she didn't even bother to look. We rode on, up hills, slid down hollers, and it seemed like we should be getting close to camp. We finally came to one of the most breathtaking sights, sheer cliffs and the waters from Paint Creek Lake was backed up into them. We rode along the gorge and marvelled at the driftwood that we saw higher up than the trail we were riding on. It was a beautiful sight and we felt very awed.

But time was slipping away and we were well into the afternoon, so continued on for camp. After a while, we approached a sign that said Stream Crossing, with one arrow pointing one way that said Difficult and another arrow pointing another way that said Less Difficult. Well, I'm not faint hearted so I told Amanda, "Let's check out the difficult crossing". Hmmmm. Yep, that looked difficult alright. I couldn't even see the way out on the other side. The water looked pretty high and was very dark and muddy, I guess because of the rain. Well, I don't like getting in over my head (no pun intended) and since I couldn't see the bottom, I opted for checking out the less difficult trail. When I saw it, I thought, "Oh crap, I know it's GOT to be a good 8 miles back if we don't cross this thing". I sat there debating whether my butt was up to another 8 miles of riding. I just KNEW there was no way Charla was going to go in there. Charla has always been leery of crossing little trickles, but she will follow if another horse plays guinea pig. But this was a bit more than a trickle. As Amy approached the Less Difficult crossing, Charla plowed on in. I was shocked but I guess she was pretty thirsty. Amy went right in, as I'd known she would (she is our Nessie, after all). I started trying to see the way out for this "Less Difficult" crossing. I finally spotted it a ways upstream. But a big log was floating on top of the water in between where we stood and where we had to climb out. Since the water was so muddy, I had no idea how deep it was and told Amanda to go easy and stick close. We started wading towards the place where we needed to climb ashore again and I was hoping that Amy knew how to swim instead of just sinking beneath the water. By the time the water was up to my ankles (mine, I said, not Amy's), I was really hoping my confidence in her was justified. We worked our way around the end of the log and had to detour around a huge boulder that was barely submerged. Once we made it to the edge, we then had to climb out on layers of rocks that made something similar to a stairstep. I was a bit nervous of the rocks since they were mud covered and slick but the girls did good and brought us safely up out of the stream. But I'll tell you, where I grew up in southern Indiana, we called something like that "stream" a river.

Well, we survived that and climbed back up the hillside and were able to look down and see where we'd just crossed. It was kind of humbling. After we'd topped the hill, we started talking about the Appaloosa breed and I asked Amanda if she could imagine, that by the time we were back in camp, we'd have ridden about 17 miles in about 24 hours. I asked her if she'd ever read about Appaloosa history and did she know about how the Nez Perce stayed ahead of the army for all those months and miles. I commented that it sure makes a person wonder just how tough those original Appaloosas really were, because these girls' butts were definitely dragging.
Considering the rain we'd had, the trails really weren't as bad as I'd been afraid they would be. Oh, we had to watch what we were doing at times and definitely had some mucky spots to go through, but the trails weren't nearly as bad as I'd expected.
But we hung in there and finally made it back to camp. I'll tell you, we were sure walking funny for a while. We finished breaking camp and gathered everything up and got the girls loaded. We made the hour drive home and unloaded them. They sure did seem tired. Poor girls!

I decided I needed to rest a bit before I started chores. We'd turned Charla and Amy out into the field upon unloading. But after an hour or so out in the field, when I went down to do chores, I noticed that both were able to come at a gallop when I called them in to feed. Hmmmmm..... maybe they had plenty of grit left but conned us into thinking they were worn out.

So, would we do it again? You bet!!! We're looking forward to it! Next time, I hope it's not so muddy and hope we'll have a few more riders, but even if it's just two or three of us, there is plenty to enjoy and marvel at. I can't wait to get back out there with my camera. We got to see wildlife, beautiful wildflowers in bloom, and some really beautiful, rugged country. Plus we got to enjoy the peaceful serenity that you can only seem to find out in the woods. We were able to look out off numerous hilltops and enjoy the view of Paint Creek Lake. And we even rode a section of trail that was marked as the old Anderson Road, which was the first surveyed road in Highland County. It was surveyed in 1805 at a cost of $18 per mile.
AND........ I still have a brand new, unused rain slicker in my saddle bags ........ just in case : - )