Trail Challenges

Trail Challenges

Ellen had a day off from work, and that usually means one of two things--bad weather or trail maintenance.  We had a bit of both.  The weather was extremely hot--and they were repairing the trail.

Though she saw that they were repairing the banks on the second river crossing, she still wanted to go on a trail ride.  Due to the heat, we would take it slow.  The river banks at our first crossing needed some repair, too.  If they were working on that when we got there, we couldn't cross the river.  If they started on it while we were out, we might have some problems getting home.  

When we got to the river, they were nowhere in sight, so we headed down the trail.  After about ten minutes, we heard some very loud machinery approaching.  We didn't know if it was on the trail or on the street.  The park workers will always stop when they see horses, but they have to see us first.

Ellen started to get that panicked sound to her voice.  She was in the lead, so she asked me to put Cole in front.  We still couldn't tell where the noise was coming from, so she told me to trot on ahead to find them and tell them to stop.  

We went trotting down the trail.  As I went around the corner, I saw a large front end loader coming right down the trail.  I asked Cole to stop and signaled to the driver to stop, too.  He did, and then I waved Ellen on.  Cole walked up to the machine to give it a sniff, and I thanked the driver and chatted as Ellen caught up.  I asked him if they were planning to fix our river bank, and he said he would try.  He didn't say when, though.  We were a little concerned that we might have trouble on the way home, but we proceeded, anyway.

We checked the work that they did on the second river crossing, and it looked great, but Ellen decided the river was a little too high for her to cross.  We crossed on the ford, instead, and continued down the trail.  At the next intersection, the park workers had backed up their flatbed trailer that they used to haul the front end loader.  It wasn't quite blocking the trail.  We could have squeezed by, but it would have been tight.  Since it was such a hot day, we didn't have the energy to try, so we headed back towards home.

First, Cole wanted to take a look at it.  The ramp was down, and it felt like he would have ridden right up it, had I asked.  When I turned him away from it, he did put one foot on the ramp as we passed.  He didn't seem startled, so I think he did it on purpose.  Dante also rode up to it, but he didn't get any silly ideas like Cole.

When we got to the hill we have to ride down, we could see a dump truck on the trail below--heading our way.  I could hear the trepidation in Ellen's voice--and then the relief when it turned and cut over to the road.  It was empty, so we figured they were heading to get more dirt.

As we moseyed on home, we kept our eyes and ears open to potential problems.  Ellen was telling me how she has been trying not to worry about things until they happen.  She saved herself a lot of worrying because when we did find the front end loader, he was parked by the side of the trail.  They were fixing a very stony section that always gets washed out every year because it is so low and very close to the river, and he was waiting for more dirt for the trail.  We stopped and talked a little to him--he said they may not get to our river bank for a few more days.  We told him how much we appreciate how well they take care of our trails.

Then we saw the dump truck coming down the trail behind us.  It was time to high tail it out of there.  Well, we actually just trotted.  We were pretty far down the trail when we heard the dump truck dump its dirt.

Not long after, we ran into Kevin on Starry coming our way.  We told him what was going on, and he decided to turn around and ride the other direction.  Poor Starry wasn't too happy when we crossed the river to go home, and he had to keep going the other way.

Both our horses handled everything so well!  We were very proud of them.

Ellen and Dante finished the Virtual Tevis Cup on this ride--100 miles in 100 days--so I am glad it had an extra challenge to it--and they rose to the challenge!