Perfect Sunday :)

It was a glorious day for riding!!!

Michelle and I headed out to what we hoped might be a new close-to-home conditioning trail just outside of Castle Rock. 

When we arrived at the parking spot we were greeted by two large Labradors behind a lovely black wrought iron fence just across the road from our parking spot.  The dogs literally barked their head off for about 10 minutes, but were wagging at the same time.

Cartman came out of the trailer in a huge snit (I suspect because of the barking) and I worried that I might be in for a wild ride.

We hand walked the horses down the road to go around the locked gate and found a place to get on just inside.  We were far enough away from the dogs that C had returned to his normal cool, calm, and collected demeanor. Whew.

We rode for 3 hours!!!! It was heavenly.  It was logging road, but a lot was old enough that you could safely jog or lope it.  Since we'd never been here before Michelle had tried to map out a loop for us using Google maps. 

Unfortunately the one section we needed to ride on the power lines to loop around to another logging road was far steeper than it appeared on the computer.  Nonetheless, we off roaded it through some overgrown logging trails and managed to get 10 miles in without backtracking too much.

There is one section that is an awesome hill climb.  It goes on, and on, and on.  Cinnamon was on her first real adventure with us out in the woods so we let them jog the hill when they thought they just couldn't climb up slowly anymore.

We took it pretty slow today but Cartman got a great work out in.  On the way back to the trailers both horses stopped and drank from puddles! 

We ran into a pair of ladies on Walking horses just as we were getting back to the trailers and they said they ride up there quite a bit and have several loops. 

This looks like a promising spot to ride this spring.

On the way home we stopped for coffee :) It doesn't get any better than a good ride and a good Americano!

When we got home I fussed with the computer trying to get these pictures to download for an hour.  I finally gave up and went and took a nap.

Then I went out, groomed up Cartman and practiced the massage I learned at the clinic last weekend.  He really seems to like this stuff (can't say I blame him!)  and he will stop eating to stand there and let me rub him, especially the neck and rump areas.  Happy horse :)