Trail again!

Alicia and I have been riding together more frequently again! She recently had surgery and is in 'recovery' which, as horse people, we understand as taking things easy but riding anyway.

 We met up again at the Polly Ann Trail on the 15th and went the same way I'd gone prior when I was alone. This time the snow was gone from the trail and we had more gravel from the former train line to contend with. We also went much further!

Alicia brought Amanda, and I've decided that we are the Triple A team. They have been dating since shortly after meeting for the first time at Oak Leaf in October (seriously, met online with a dating app and Amanda drove out to meet Alicia for the first time to camp all the way across the state).  They're great with each other and I love it.

Gwyn once again was great for loading and I'm really feeling the enthusiasm she has for getting out and about lately.

Then on Saturday (23rd) we met up again, this time in Dryden. The weather was warmer and fully sunny! I had to run into work to check sample results and did that as quickly as possible, and pre-dressed in my breeches. I basically came home and hooked up the trailer and left. Best Husband stayed with the kids. Bless him.

And color coordinated to boot with Sara's side nail business :D  

 Gwyn once again hopped right on with no hesitations. I don't think I'll ever stop mentioning it because it's still amazing to me and I still expect what she was when it comes to trailer loading.

Blue skies and a water slide in the background

Happy Mare is Happy

 I finally have a new case for my new phone so I felt secure holding it to take a photo while also trying to control a mare who JUST WANTS TO GET TO THE TRAIL DAMMIT.

 We wanted to try and get to the point where it crosses under the highway I-69. We almost got there. Maybe about a mile more but I couldn't tell because my estimation was based on us riding perpendicular to the mile roads and I knew we had reached a point where the trail took off at an angle. Plus it was getting late and we still had to turn around. I didn't want Eric to be alone with the kids for too long.

 I did use my hoof boots this ride, the Equine Fusions. Gwyn's hoof has changed SO MUCH from the time I bought them that she was slipping in them and walking more on the back soft part rather than in the cup of the boot themselves. They are now too big. Which is a great issue to have, imo! If I had been able to get an application of hoof armor on her after her last trim I would have gone without, but it was just too cold at the time. Her hoof shape is far improved. More on thoughts about that in another post.

 She got sweaty on this ride! We did a lot more trotting and I've decided I'm giving her a tiny trace clip to help. I'll likely clip more before Brighton as extended forecasts show GOOD weather *knock on wood* but pretty warm for a still very fuzzy creature to be making a lot of effort in.

And then, like a good Michigan resident, she had a Paczki, long after Fat Tuesday

I think it would be about 12miles total to get to the highway, and maybe 16 if we tried to go all the way to the Imlay City parking lot. That's a good goal for conditioning! 

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. 

Wolcott Mill Metropark Ride

On Saturday Alicia and I made plans to go trail riding. We didn't have much of a goal in mind other than get the horses in shape for the endurance rides we were planning on doing this fall. Plans were equally compounded by Gwyn still not having a shoe on one of her front feet plus the velcro stickers were loose on her feet so I had just pulled it off so the Megasus were out of the question. My farrier is coming Monday and I didn't feel like wasting a velcro thinger for a day. My goal was to go to a place where the footing wouldn't negatively effect Gwyn.

Highlights from my helmet cam

Wolcott Mill seemed good. While it would be fairly boring as it's just farm field edge riding with some woods it's also pretty well groomed as it's one of the few places that's good for people to come and use their carriages. It's nice and wide and mowed. The last time I was there was in 2015. I was hoping it wouldn't be as muddy as last time since we've been lacking some regular rain lately.

Wide, groomed trails

Right away, the horse flies decided to be horrendous. They were the giant ones, big black, the size of a fingernail and not your pinky unless you have humongo hands. They drove Gwyn absolutely mad. They really liked landing on her butt, right in the little dip on her spine where she couldn't reach with her tail. She figured out that if she bucked it would flip her tail up and over to swish at them but honestly I just tried to smack them as much as possible. The fuckers would dodge as soon as they saw my hand.

So this ride was characterized by a TON of bucking and kicking on Gwyn's part, while she was being perfectly behaved. Several times she broke into a trot just to try to escape them. So noted, Gwyn. We will not do Wolcott again in the summer. We'll wait for fall when the bugs are dead. The deer flies were equally bad but not as maddening. Fly spray did nothing.

 The parking is on the north side of 29 mile road but all of the trails are on the south side. So rather than cross a sometimes busy mile road, we go under it!

I was pointing out a deer, this is the view immediately on the other side of the road

Random ridiculous giant rock ditch that we bypassed

Baby deer bounding toward us! Watch the video for a better view

Hello storm clouds

 We started hearing thunder at this point in the ride and shrugged it off. The storm seemed fairly distant.

Alicia and the Storm

You can see the B52 bomber fly

It was right around this time that we saw lightning and suddenly getting back to the trailers was urgent.

Back under 29 Mile Rd

Alicia's reins got stuck when she tried to use them to get rid of a deer fly on his ear. It didn't work, lol

River view

In the woods heading back to parking

Endomondo Stats

Side by side map comparison from 2015 and Saturday. We covered some new ground. This gives me hope for going back for some good conditioning mileage.