I was feeling adventurous so I decided to take a new route. With the recent logging on the New Trail, we've been unable to use most of it. Since I found out exactly where the logging is going on, I now knew how to navigate the trail. Instead of going down the hill and to the right, you now go straight, crossing the creek and going up the hill. Then you go left at the fork which leads into some nice flat spots on the New Trail, so now you are headed backwards on the New Trail. Before you get to the next creek crossing you turn right and head up the hill on to Bowater. For those of you not from the area, Bowater is a paper plant that owns land all over the area. They of course grow trees on it so that they can cut those trees down every so often. So there are plenty of logging roads all over their property. Now I'm not certain of the requirements of a person to be on their land, but we've pretty much got free rein. So once you hit Bowater you can go left up to the tomato field or right back towards the New Trail. I went right just because that tomato field is a long ways away... You then look for the purple dot on the tree and then head back on to Hughes land. Yes, one of our boarders that often, self admittedly, gets lost, spray painted a large purple dot on a tree so they'd know when to turn back on to Hughes land. I personally love it because it helps me remember where to go too. This trail then winds itself back across the creek where you can hit multiple trails. This day I decided to head up what I call Pumpkin Patch Hill because this leads you to the Rocky Top Trail which has a great straight flat spot to canter through. Rocky Top Trail is designated as such because of all the great rock outcroppings.
This trail crosses the gravel road and winds its way back to the Submarine Trail (also greater for cantering) and then to the Creek Trail. All said and done it was a solid two hours on the trail. Chief was dripping wet! It was a warm 60 degrees and sunny with not a cloud in the sky and with all his heavy winter fur he was hot. There is that old saying about riding a horse hard and putting him up wet. I'm not sure where that came from but that is pretty much what I did. Now, I did brush him down good and made sure he cooled off all the way before putting him up which is just the safe thing to do. Darn finicky horse stomachs can get upset if they eat too much or drink too much cold water immediately after working out. So be sure to let your horse at least cool off before putting him up. A good test of this is to touch his chest, if its hot, then he's still hot and needs to cool down more. If its just warm, or normal body temperature, he's good to put up.
Since my buddy Chief is a registered Paint horse, I am a member of the American Paint Horse Association. They have a great program called Ride America. It's for us paint owners that aren't in to showing but want to be a part of something. Its really simple, you keep a log of the hours you ride and send it in at the end of each year. If you ride in national parks its worth double the hours. At certain mile stones there are prizes and what not. I've reached 100 hours so I got my 100 hours patch and a coffee mug. Prizes get better as you go. I'll let you know when I reach the next milestone at 500 hours. But this program is free to all registered members so I play along. This year I was able to log 86 1/2 hours of total trail time. Not bad for a person that works full time and is also in school! I think this will put me overall somewhere around 300 hours since I started which was in 2008. Maybe after graduation in August, I'll be able to start logging more hours. So maybe my New Year's resolution will be to ride more often...
Happy New Year!
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