Rough Riders

 

TC saw a good looking horse this morning. He fogged up the mirror admiring that guy. He's so cute.

I would put up our horses against any and all other horses in true trail trials! Sheeze Louise.  Our trails are pretty tough these days. From the huge mess where it was logged, to the almost heartbreaking mess the Forest Service/CalFire dozer left us. Saturday, we went backwards to West Hoop-de-doo. We just motored on and worked our way around the mess Mother Nature caused. Lynn thinks she has an idea about skirting around the tight corners the motorcycles carved into single track trails, so next time, we'll criss cross/zig zag our way above that area. 

We checked out the paper nest on the way up to the road (another mess of fallen limbs and trees), and sure enough: wasps were at home. We were able to swing wide, but TC still ended up with one following him and bugging him for a ways up the road. Lynn was able to discern that what looked like a ground nest was indeed inhabited and we missed it as well. 

She said TC was a little off all day, but when Jupes got in front to head for home, he sure trotted along with us. It was a fun trot along the roller coaster part of the trail and then we slowed down for the messy, boonie bouncing, trailhead. 

Sunday is another story. We checked out the right hand side of Hennessey and rode out the dozer road last weekend, but we didn't think about that he also gone to the left! We were going to go up Widowmaker Ridge and then to Brushy Balls. Well! 

Widowmaker Ridge trail is pretty much gone.

We detoured off the road and went straight up the rocky, dusty dozer road. It took us down to the fork where we come up from the boggy bottom of the turtle pond trail. Jupes was sad. That was one of his grass eating spots. Directly across from that fork is the start of the trail. It's not a trail. It's a dozer road--steep and dusty. We glimpsed sections of our trail off to the side. We went all the way up to the top of that ridge and back down. What a bummer. That trail was used to be so fun; it always had lots of flowers and old trees to keep an eye on. I liked how it meandered up the mountain. Gone.

After we came back down the dozer road, we veered to the left near Indy's frog pond and boonie crashed (and I mean boonie CRASHED)  our way to the good water hole for the dogs to drink. We came back out onto the road, which has been graded as well. We didn't see the trail's namesake. We bypassed the turtle pond and went down the boggy spot. TC did great.

We ran across bees somewhere in there and both horses did fine. I worried about TC because we haven't ever been riding with him when we experienced bees, but he handled it like a pro. They didn't seem to bother KD or Ziv. That's a relief!

Jupes skated, slid, and stumbled his way through everything today. It was a little wild. When we got to the end of the ride, I checked his feet and found a pretty big and pointy rock stuck in a shoe. Dang. I don't know how long it had been in there. 

Two days of riding through crap is better than two days of not riding.