We came, we rode, we got soaking wet, we had a blast

What did not occur until we were done with our ride

I've mellowed considerably since my last post. Mainly because I went for a ride. Though politics are quickly intruding on my equine chill.

The weather reports for this weekend were awful, the Hunt Pace that I had planned on going to got delayed to next weekend, so I'm really not going to it because I'll be at Oak Leaf Run. And suddenly that's fine.

I instead thought I'd do Brighton to Pinckney. But that got moved to next weekend and I'll be at Oak Leaf (seeing a pattern?)

Suddenly not having anything I was looking forward to doing more than Oak Leaf has made life okay. Instead, I pestered Alicia (ok, not really, she's an easy sell) to see if she wanted to ride Saturday. The weather report showed a small break in the percentage chance of rain starting at 9am and I was damned if I was going to miss that window.

We ultimately decided on meeting at Ortonville Rec Area, which would be nice and wooded. And with the weather cooling off, the bugs would be gone (but not mosquitoes). I had to drive my Mom down to Brighton early that morning so I pretty much drove down there and back, then immediately hooked the truck and trailer up and worked on loading Gwyn.

Gwyn, was a jerk.

She found the ONE spot where my 'load up quick' fence was not fully blocked (and honestly I didn't realize it wasn't fully connected) and escaped to gallivant across the property. I had been forward thinking and was wearing my rain boots so I didn't get too wet. Eric noticed I was having trouble and came out just in time to see me finally get Gwyn loaded and standing still. He was highly amused at her ability to turn around in my straight load. She's ridiculously flexible for how large she is. I was not nearly as amused because my ramp was starting to get slick from poop skids and I had fallen.

I finally got on the road and it started to rain in earnest. I met Alicia at the camping lot and we both got out and went... 'Um... is that thunder?'

So we waited out the lightning and thunder under the pavilion without unloading the horses while Alicia made reins out of rope because she'd forgotten hers (but at least not her girth...)

With the most dangerous part of the storm over but the rain still insisting on falling, we unloaded and tacked up.

And then proceeded to ride for an hour and forty minutes. LOL.  It did stop raining as soon as we got on, but the branches above us shaking dripped water the whole time. And then 40 minutes in the skies opened up again and we just embraced the rain. It was wonderful. It wasn't too cold, high 60s and I did have my rain jacket so I wasn't utterly soaked though my saddle will need some TLC for sure. We did a ton of hills, but mostly stuck to a walk because the trails had a ridiculous number of plum and baseball sized rocks. We had to pick our way carefully up and down.

Gwyn had some.. moments. One of which was her spooking at a leaf landing on her butt. Another was a small buck while walking down hill because a fallen clump of leaves touched her leg. We were laughing SO HARD.

And since it got cut off, 6.13 miles in 1h43m, 1800 calories burned

We got back and the skies cleared up, LOL.  We both immediately tossed coolers on the horses and let them graze and cool. They were both steaming.  It was a great day. I'm glad I did it. Doing this loop is GREAT for hills. It'll be good conditioning and I intend to repeat it even solo through the winter.

It was good for my soul.

And then I went home and took a nap. 

OREA Poker Ride May 26

Last week Alicia messaged me to see if I wanted to meet her at a Poker Ride at the state recreation area. It's only about a half hour drive from home and I was very game! We were supposed to get thunderstorms through the weekend but the forecast was showing they wouldn't be here until later in the day. The ride was in the morning? Heck yes!

It was super relaxed and run by the Ortonville Recreation Equestrian Association. $10 to ride, $5 if you were a member. I decided to join the group mainly because they're the ones responsible for the maintenance and building of the equestrian campground and trails. Support your local trail orgs! It's a good cause and it helps you keep access!

They've built a pavilion and a couple other amenities at the campground, which is quite nice. I wish there were more trails though. I'd be TOTALLY willing to ride manage an endurance ride here if there was enough mileage. As it is, you'd struggle to get an LD. At most you could do an intro ride. It would be a good spot to do clinics.

Anyway...

I made sure I was mostly packed Friday night and then went out to load Saturday morning.  Gwyn was a pill and got away from me before I could close up my magic loading pen of magic. But because I always anticipate things like this, I ended up only being 5 minutes behind schedule, lol.

Putting away the first set of strings

 The sky was threatening rain and it was oppressively humid. Alicia and I were wishing it would actually rain. It never did, but the sun did come out which only added to the heat. Thankfully the trails at Ortonville are all wooded. It was quite pleasant.

For the poker ride we had to go collect string from 7 different stations along the trail. They'd marked the map with the path to take where we would find each station. For each string we found we'd get a card from a deck and whoever had the best hand would win half the pot of money from the entries. You had to find a minimum of 5 stations.

Happy mare after we ditched the big group

 Most everyone found six but there was a HUGE tree down on the trail that had to have been recent and apparently the 7th one was right there, lol.

Alicia and I started out with a group of people that she knew from up in her neck of the woods. They were riding somewhat green horses (and a mule!) and immediately set off on this hardly used trail in an effort to avoid the muddier parts of the main trail.

Alicia and I had no idea what was going on and I honestly should have applied the endurance maxim "Ride your Own Ride" to this one.

We briefly took a wrong turn.

 Gwyn was PISSED OFF. I figured this would be a low key event and wanted to try my new sidepull noseband. Haha. Hahahahahahahhaah. That was a mistake. It was like a comedy of errors.

1. We tucked in behind Alicia's friends. Gwyn did NOT like that.
2. Those friends were going S.L.O.W.  Gwyn did NOT like that either. I was constantly turning her into the trees so we wouldn't run up the quarter horse's ass in front of us. I felt awful because that's just rude on my part.
3. I had very little braking power from Miss Friesian Muscular Neck in that sidepull. Or at least very little respect from her.

We got to a water crossing and the lead horse was balking at going through either the water or over the bridge so I asked if we could just pass them. They let us go, Gwyn eyed the bridge, then clomped confidently over it. We turned a corner and there was a hill and that was where I lost control.

Gwyn TOOK off and just galloped up the trail. She blew through my aids and while I was laugh-crying, I wasn't entirely pleased. I should have turned back and grabbed the baucher I had in the trailer. Hindsight.

Patches of mud

Alicia caught up with us quickly and we went on to have a much better ride with just the two of us. Gwyn led the whole way and only had one more run away moment. Otherwise she was rating back and listening to the sidepull. In the future, I'd use it for endurance rides after we've been on the first loop. But not for the first loop, dear god. That mare is a freight train.

I swear she thought it was an endurance ride too. I was hoping for a more relaxed pace, haha.

Ponds in the Rec Area

 And again, sorry for the tilt. I need to figure out how to mount my go pro so it won't be like this.

Notable Quotes Include:

"Holy shit that frog's huge! It's like a mountain chicken!"
"You almost had a frog in a frog!" "Oh that wouldn't have been fun to pick out later..."
"I just squished a little caterpillar bug on my leg!"

 On approaching a hill: 
"Hey, we're probably going to end up going up this fast. Are you good?"
"So grab my reins?"
"Yeah"
"AS I EAT A CLIFF BAR!"

 Then later...
"Still eating the cliff bar!"

Hard to tell, but this is a giant, steep hill (for Michigan)

 "For the past, I don't know, quite a while, she's had a stick in the bottom of her tail..."

Those steps are used in their judged trail ride. We went up them just fine!

 "Can we not walk in the marsh? Thank you."

The downed tree and where the path is supposed to go...

Creek or bridge option crossing. 

Gwyn checks out the marsh

Hot mare.

The purple cantle pack was one of my blogger exchange gifts! It's perfect with all my purple!

They are good buddies now.

Walking back to our trailers to cool the horses off.

Neither of us had a good enough hand to win the money, but we were famished enough to enjoy the grilled hot dogs that were provided by OREA.  I will definitely return, both to OREA events and this trail system. It's got some nice hills we can condition on and get some decent mileage in with loops that aren't far from parking.

I'll eventually have a video of the highlights of the ride.

Ride stuff!

I've got lots to catch up, especially as I was tagged in a blog hop. But first things first, my venture to Ortonville State Recreation Area!

On tuesday I was up super early. Kaylee had woken up at 5 am and even though I got her back to sleep, I just could not sleep myself. I had the truck all packed the night before so all I needed to do was make sure that I could get everyone onto the truck and trailer and leave before 8 am. Simple, right?

It actually wasn't that bad, hah!  Kaylee was still passed out, so I went down to the barn and grabbed Gwyn. She loaded relatively quickly and easily. I drove the truck and trailer around to the front of the house, opened the side window and left Gwyn to her hay while I went inside to wake Kaylee up.

My plan obviously involved making Gwyn just stand in the trailer, but as my friend Cortney always said, it's good for horses to practice 'grocery shopping'.

Anyway, I got Kaylee dressed and fed, then we piled into the truck and were out the door perfectly on time! It normally takes 25 minutes or so to get to her gymnastics camp in Oxford and I gave myself more like 40 since I was hauling. I was still super early. Got Kaylee situated, then up the road Gwyn and I went to the state park. It was only 15 minutes away, I mentally made sure I was planning to be leaving by 30 min prior to pick up.

Places to Ride an hour or less away

I'm starting to try and figure out where I can trailer to for some trail access. There's a decent amount of stuff in the area that's horse friendly, it's just me needing to know where I can go and where parking is that's holding me up.

This all was inspired by me looking for a place for Kaylee and I to go swimming that wasn't over 30 minutes away (Stony Creek). We ended up going to Metamora-Hadley Recreation area that's 10 miles away and was perfect, but that's another story.

Check it, any place that is listed as a recreation area is under the umbrella of the DNR and is a state park. It costs $11 annually for access to these parks. FUCK YES.

Anyway, places so far that I've found are:

Polly-Ann Trail
Technically if I trusted Gwyn on the road AND our road wasn't super speedy, I could ride to this trail from our house. We're less than 2 miles from an access point where it crosses a road. Polly-Ann is open to riders, but you're restricted to walking (though I can't find this verbage now on their websites...). From what I've seen of the points of access near me, no one uses the damn thing to even know if I might go faster than a walk. After my last debacle of trying to walk her along a road that had a high speed limit I'm not really interested in trying again until her brain gets rooted a bit more deeply. Especially with minimal shoulder.
What I really want is to make friends with the people who live right by the trail and ask if I can park at their place to ride on the trail. That would be ideal.

I did more research. There is trailer friendly parking down Rochester Rd in Leonard. Just nothing directly off Rochester Rd where it crosses, which is where I've been looking. Doh. Leonard is 10 minutes away. I'll explore tomorrow.

http://www.destinationoakland.com/parksandtrails/trailsoakroutes/Documents/PATMap2013FINAL.pdf
http://pollyanntraillapeer.org/
http://www.pollyanntrailway.org/

The Lapeer PAT group is doing a fall colors tour the day after my birthday in October! I'm SO ATTENDING!!!! Tentative info about the ride leads me to believe I might be able to park at General Squier Park, which is in Dryden itself. Dude. DUDE.  4 miles away. FUCK YEAH.

Pontiac Lake Recreation Area
About an hour away, this place has the most trail mileage available nearby topping out at 17 miles. It also looks as though they have a good loop for big mileage from looking at their map. There's a campground for horse camping and they have a rental stable which might be bad since I've heard some things about avoiding riding when the renters are out and about.

http://www.michigandnr.com/Publications/PDFS/RecreationCamping/pontiac_lake_map.pdf

Addison Oaks County Park
This thing is just down the road. Not riding down the road, but...  20 minutes away. I had no idea it was there until today. (I'm serious).   There's not a lot of mileage, but there's a few separate loops of equestrian trail that I could do. And it's SO CLOSE!! Just under 10 miles of trail, which is pretty good, all things considered!

I might take Kaylee here tomorrow and go biking just so I can scout it all out and figure out parking and get a pass. Since this is a county park it has a different pass system. I wish there was an annual all parks pass for all the counties.
http://www.destinationoakland.com/parksandtrails/mapspublications/Documents/May%202013%20addison%20trail%20map.pdf
http://www.destinationoakland.com/parksandtrails/mapspublications/PublishingImages/AO%20East%20Trail%20map_2012.pdf
http://www.destinationoakland.com/parksandtrails/mapspublications/Documents/addison-connector-trail.pdf

Ortonville Recreation Area
At 25 minutes away (about 20 miles) is this lovely place with just less than 9 miles of trails, but from the look of the map, we'd be able to ride for a LOT longer just by doing mini loops. They also have an equestrian campground. I like that the equestrian trails are very much separate from the main part of the park so there's not really a multi-use conflict.

http://www.michigandnr.com/Publications/PDFS/RecreationCamping/ortonville_map.pdf

Addison Township Watershed Preserve
At 6 minutes away this is the next closest after Polly-Ann. I found it when Kaylee wanted to go hiking but 7 Ponds Nature Center was closed. I had remembered seeing this just down Rochester Rd, barely over the county line into Oakland County. The board at the front had no information about use but upon hitting the trail I saw a sign that said "Clean up your manure!"   Ah HAH!  Horses are allowed!

There's not a lot of trail here, but at 6 minutes away it's hard to beat, especially since there's no fee for use. Maybe 2 miles of trail but some nice hills and all woody with some lake views. And decent parking to turn a horse trailer around.

An article on riding in the park in the winter!
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/lifestyle/20140126/riding-with-a-mounted-trail-patrol-at-addison-watershed-preserve
http://www.twp.addison.mi.us/Portals/3/PDF/Township%20Parks.pdf

Elba Equestrian Complex
Free to day use riders, also has camping available. It's also 25 minutes away. I can't get details on length of trails, but it's got over 1000 acres of trails available. I'll need to investigate further before bringing Gwyn.

http://www.geneseecountyparks.org/images/contentImages/file/2015%20Elba%20Map%20and%20Rules.pdf