My husband was home for this ride, so we decided to bring DC along for her first camping experience. I had to work that Friday morning, so we wound up getting a rather later start than I expected. I wasn't worried, though, because the ride is fairly close to home. Ha. It took us almost three hours to drive there! I was surprised how long it took us. We were the last to arrive. I missed the ride meeting, so picked up my packet where it was left out for me. Because it was well past dark, the vet elected to vet Hoss in the morning. It turned out to be pretty dark then, too, so he really got little advantage for the choice.
We got camp set up and my husband made some wonderful carne asada and corn tortillas for dinner. I set up our new, queen size air bed cot. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I will not sleep on the ground again. This cot was a great find. It can be used with or without the air mattress. We used it with the mattress and it was quite comfortable and I was off the ground.
In the morning my husband cooked up a breakfast of eggs, bacon and potatoes. Someone came over while I was still in the tent after feeding Hoss, thinking that not only did I get breakfast, but my husband would saddle my horse. We disabused her of that, but I took the opportunity to wax effusive about the way my husband takes care of me at a ride.
I saddled Hoss and took him to see the vet, who thought he was funny when he joked Hoss was lame. Yeah, not funny, dude.
I rode out on the trail in the early morning light. We passed Laurie Birch early on, which isn't unusual for Hoss. Laurie tends to set a slower pace at the start, and we catch and pass them often. Of course, most of the time, because Hoss is more consistent than he is fast, they often catch back up to us before we get much more than halfway through the ride.
The scenery was beautiful. We cut around a mountainside and onto the California Riding and Hiking Trail. There was an area that had recently burned (I can't remember when it must have been).
This was one of our standard three vet check rides. We came into the first check in decent time. Hoss recovered quickly and we vetted through. The vet noted he seemed to be short striding behind. I said he felt normal, and she'd said the same thing at Manzanita. She wasn't going to pull us for it, but wanted to mention it.
Hoss ate his electrolyte bran mash and picked at some hay while we waited for our hold time to be up. After our 20 minutes, we hit the trail once again.
Not long after leaving the vet check, perhaps two or three miles down the trail, I heard something behind me. I thought it was another horse catching up and looked back. Nothing and no one to be seen. I continued to ride on and heard the noise again. This happened several times before I turned around and saw three dogs following me. I had heard one of the dogs' collar tags. I hollered at them to go home and for some time I thought they'd turned around.
I decided to dismount and lead Hoss down a particularly ugly hill trail with significant rock on it. It was steep and treacherous enough with rolly rocks I decided to use my cane as insurance that I would make it down in one piece. While I was getting the cane, the dogs appeared behind us on the trail.
At this point I figured it was unlikely I'd get rid of them. I knew I wasn't responsible for them, but I would have felt terrible if I'd left them behind and something had happened to them. One appeared to be quite elderly. So I continued on my way, but paid attention to where they were.
We were on well-used trail for some time, then we were turned off onto a new, and quite steep hill. Hoss was having difficulty with it, so I decided to get off and lead him down it. The problem became immediately evident. The new trail was through large rocks and boulders which were still somewhat buried in the new and hardly used trail. At some point on this section, Hoss scraped the front of his pastern badly enough to make him a little stiff after our next vet hold. The wound was about the size of a quarter.
We came to a water trough were a ranger was hanging out. I told him the dogs weren't mine, not that he seemed particularly worried about them. They followed me all the way to the second vet check.
Someone at the vet check recognized the dog and, with some effort, the dogs were contained to be returned to their home. Hoss vetted through without incident. I set him up with his electrolyte bran mash and hay, which he happily munched while we waited. I was able to find adequate items that fit into my diet to have a decent lunch. I had packed enough in my saddle bags that I didn't need it, but it's kinda nice to find something fresh and not pre-packaged to eat.
While in for our hold, Laurie arrived. I think we were about 15 minutes in to our hold. We had slowed quite a bit to keep from leaving the dogs too far behind, so I wasn't surprised.
Once our hold was up, I got mounted up and told Laurie we'd see her soon. At that point it was a forgone conclusion they'd catch up to us.
We managed to keep a decent clip for much of the next loop. It helped when Laurie caught up to us. We were walking up a steep and rocky hill when they caught up to us. It was a rather treacherous ascent. There were two other riders who caught up as well. While we negotiated this intense section of trail, all of us expressed some dismay over the trail selected. I think by that point we had mostly decided it was our first and last time to do that ride.
We finally got out of the nasty stuff and back on more reasonable roads. We were getting close to the vet check, and it was getting later than any of us would have liked. We took the opportunity to canter a bit. When we were within half a mile I hopped off and led Hoss the rest of the way in to the check.
We got through our last 20 minute hold and got back on the trail. Hoss was tired enough -- or at least seemed tired enough -- that I decided to leave his bit off. I hooked the reins to the sides of his halter to ride him the rest of the way back to camp.
By now there were four of us clumped together to come in to the finish. The trail back was largely nice, so we were able to keep up a good pace.
When we arrived at the top end of the camp area, we all got a wild hair across our collective butt and kicked our horses up to a good canter. The four of us came bombing in to camp and started pulling up. Except Hoss was not listening. For a moment I thought we were going to run right back out of camp on the trail. He did finally decide he'd rather go ahead and stop. Of course his heart rate was quite high, so after getting our completion time I took him to the trailer to recover. Despite the silly running, he recovered in reasonable time and vetted out well.
I still had enough daylight to get on DC for a quick ride in a strange place. She was good but behaving a little more silly than usual. I didn't learn until later that she'd gotten away from my husband and gone running through camp earlier in the day. Had I known that I might have spent some time on ground manners before riding her. Still, we had a decent ride.
My husband had packed up camp while I was riding, so all we needed to do was put the horses in the trailer and take off. We did fix the shallow hole DC had dug next to the trailer. Once everything was loaded, we got in and I stuck the key in the ignition. The truck failed to start. It was immediately evident to me the battery had died. It shouldn't have. We had been parked for 24 hours, and hadn't used it to charge anything. I recalled it had not started as usual at Moab, but had chalked that up to four nights without being started and being used to charge my phone and iPod.
I found someone whose vehicle we could use to jump the truck, and we were on our way, but it was clear my truck needed a new battery. On the way home we stopped to pick up a trickle charger. I needed to be at church early on Sunday morning, so we needed to be sure the truck would start in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment