Myles Standish Camping - Part 2

Got much more sleep Saturday night.  G and Sprite weren't calling back and forth so much and G seemed to have gotten used to hanging out in the outdoor corral versus his comfy stall.  He seemed to spend more time looking over toward the bathrooms now.  Hubby thinks part of the reason he stared over toward the bathroom so much is that he thought it was the barn and he was wondering what he did wrong to still be outside, lol.  Breakfast was Entenmanns'schocolate donuts and fresh fruit salad, forgotten from the night before.  Diet, what diet?  We had talked to the Bob, Sue & Lauri the host campers late Saturday and arranged to meet up for 9:30 Sunday morning.  They host a ride every Sunday throughout the riding season to show folks the trails not marked on the maps.

And the whole group...left to right:  Me & G, Jill & Sprite, Bob & his TWH and granddaughter's pony; Al & his MH; Lauri & her QH and Sue with her TB cross.

Al started us down the trail from campsite 34 and it was a pretty nice ride.  About 15 minutes into the ride G started to get full of himself (even though he was in 2nd position) and because Al had just recovered from a stroke Bob was concerned that his horse would feed off of G and thought we should split up.  So Lauri took me & Jill in one direction and Bob, Sue & Al went off in another.  We think Lauri thought we wanted to go fast cause she just started trotting off with no warning.  G of course thought he was being left and wanted to canter.  It took alot of half halts and sitting deep to get him to start thinking about me.  The trails were way too narrow to do any turns; the shrubbery too dense to go off the trail. 

After about 10-15 minutes of go fast she slowed down.  All the while she was talking about the trails we were on and then what she felt made a great trail horse.  Not surprisingly, G didn't fit her description lol.  After another 20 minutes we met back up with the other group in one of the meadows between the major dirt roads.  If I remember right there are at least four of these.  Each planted with different vegetation to attract different wild life for hunting season.  Apparently this is a big area for hunters during hunting season. 

Jill & Sprite

Through G's ears:

Bob ponying the pony

We rode through a couple of the meadows together and then split again.  Our destination was one of the ponds in the southeast corner of the forest.  It's one of the few you can take your horse into, so we both obliged - this is my favorite picture from the weekend.

At this point Jill piped up that she thought it would be good if the two of us split off for awhile since we weren't heading directly back and wanted to take it slow.  We followed our path out and then moseyed a bit down a trail we hadn't taken before.  After 10 minutes Jill thought we should retrace our steps and then follow the groups hoofprints back.  So that's what we did and we did eventually catch up to them chatting with another group of riders on the trail.  We were probably out for a little over 2 hours which was enough since all of use had a 3 hour trailer ride ahead of us.

It was without a doubt one of the best weekends I've had in a long time and it really rejuvenated my spirit!!  Jill & Sprite were marvelous trail partners and we look forward to many trail miles together in our futre.