Beware the Pay Box

It was a lovely late afternoon! 

Saturday afternoon, and I can have a couple hours to myself to ride.  I head over to pick up my friend C. and her mare Phoenix, and we decide to try out a local county park that is only about 20 minutes from her house.  We've heard that it's a pretty popular place to ride locally.  We pull in to see the camping area pretty full, including with some horse folks.  I take this as a good sign, that the trails must be pretty decent.

Rocks are good for mounting!  The vehicles you can see are the camping area, and at least 3 rigs were there with horses. 

We get ready to ride, and I head over to drop some cash in the pay box for our "suggested donation" to the park.  It's one of those metal posts with a skinny slot at the top for sliding money in.  I crouch down just enough to see the slot (it has a little overhang, presumably to protect it from rain getting in the hole) and fold up the bills to push them in.  Just as the bills begin to slide through, out fly angry wasps (or something related).  Luckily they actually weren't too aggressive, as I took a couple quick steps back and they didn't really swarm me.  I am stung on my left wrist, but it is only a single sting.  And I'm not allergic.  But getting stung always makes me mad!  Especially when I wasn't trying to aggravate them, and in fact didn't even know they were there.  I get that they were defending their nest, but I was not happy.  And I didn't get the cash in there, it fluttered to the ground. I retrieved it about 10 minutes later, after they were all safely back inside the box, waiting for the next unsuspecting human.  Sorry, Sibley County Parks, no donation for you today!

The stung wrist.  Red mark with white around is the actual sting.  It swelled from the base of my hand about 1/3 of the way up my inner forearm. 

We didn't have any ice, but I did have a bucket of cold water I'd brought for the horses, and I stood with my entire arm submerged for at least 5 minutes.  It felt good, but didn't really seem to help the rapidly spreading swelling and redness.  I didn't have any Benadryl with me (note #1 for the day: put some human meds in the horse first aid box!) but I figured I'd survive.

This park (High Island Creek County Park) is situated on top of some bluffs, with the park area straddling the creek on both sides.  Basically, what was too steep or flooded too much to farm, was designated as park. This creek drains into the Minnesota River, and descends from the former prairie (now cropland) to the west into the river valley.  The trail went directly down from the camping/parking area to the creek.

Trail down through a 2nd picnic area and to the creek. 

We last had rain 4 days ago, but the water was still completely opaque with silt and had a decent current.  We could see hoof prints across, so we knew horses had been crossing there today.  I urged Rhio in, and after a good drink, he started somewhat reluctantly across.  He veered downstream, and suddenly we were in water up to my knees (while mounted).  He didn't care for that too much, but handled it calmly and just turned toward the bank and got out of the river.  Now he was convinced it was not safe to cross, and refused to reenter the river.  I figured as I was soaked through up the knees already, I might as well just get off and lead him across.  That way I could check the footing and the depth as I went.  So I did, at one point getting crotch deep, and he followed me willingly, with C. and Phoenix right behind.  Now I'm wet-wet, and have a swollen throbbing wrist.  This is starting to sound like endurance riding!

We follow the "trail," which at this point is just a narrow path barely wide enough for horses with jungly, creeping, and often thorny/pokey vegetation nearly obscuring it.  It turns out, after talking to a pair of riders who are very familiar with it, that this is the "main trail" (the stem of a flower is how it was described to us.)  We reached what seemed to be its terminus in a more open grassy area with a sand-filled wash ahead of us.  I could see hoofprints ahead, so we kept going.  We had previously passed one or two turnings to the right which also had hoofprints, but were even less of a trail than the one we were on.  This was no exception, dwindling into a deer path rather quickly.  We continued on until encountering a Private Property sign, and a fence.  We then turned along the fence to our right, as the creek was to the left.  We continued to follow the barest hint of a path, bushwhacking around numerous deadfall and the like.  Eventually we were faced with a huge, steep climb to get back out of the creek bottom land and up onto the bluff.  We did the first half, and the horses were working hard, huffing and puffing pretty good.  After a little leveling off, we turned into what was clearly another washed out gully packed with sand and debris.  (Have I mentioned that our area has been flooded and/or inundated with excess and heavy rainfall pretty much since the temperatures got above freezing?)

I scouted up this barely-even-a-path on foot and decided after looking around at the top, that there was no better way to get up.  But there was another sorta-obvious path up top, heading back in the general direction of the truck and trailer.  We opted to hike up on foot due to the incredible steepness (I used hands AND feet a couple times on my first foray up it) and the questionable footing (mud, sticks, etc). I tried to tail Rhio, where he leads and I follow, grabbing his tail for extra power to get up the hill.  He wasn't at all sure that UP was where we should go, so I had to mostly lead him.  C. had great luck tailing her mare up, though!

We set off attempting to follow this "trail," and encountered the western park boundary and more deadfall obscuring the trail.  After bushwhacking around, we again found something that looked much more trail-like and followed it back down nearly to where we'd started up the steepest part.  Geesh!  I guess that was an exercise in futility...or just good hill work for the horses? We also found a slightly rusty horseshoe in the trail, so I guess we weren't the only ones who'd made it up here, and I guess that it was actually a "trail."

The steep hill.  I'm only about 2 horse lengths in front of C., further up the hill.  See how tiny she looks!  Very steep indeed!

With much backtracking, fumbling around, stepping over logs, and ducking under branches, we made it back down the entire hill to the sandy wash we'd originally started in.  I suppose we'd just completed a "loop."  There was a nearly impenetrable wall of super thorny shrubbery between us and the main path, so we kind of just bulled our way through until we were back into the grassy area.  Rhio for sure knew the way back to the trailer, as he was eager to move out down the path back to the water crossing.  We retraced our steps from there, despite running into the riders who explained the "trail system" to us and told us that another portion was particularly good.

This is the "good" path.  Note the jungle-like vegetation. 

I would term these paths "social trails," as they're clearly just paths worn into the landscape with use. There was absolutely no trail planning, construction, maintenance, or maps.  It was quite the adventure.  I am very glad I had Rhio, who is so incredibly steady and willing when I point him into the woods and say, "go there, no wait, go this way, oh, hold on, turn around here!"

Bushwhacking

The biggest bummer - my phone app didn't function to capture our route, speed, time, or distance.  I know we rode for about 90 minutes.  We climbed up and descended the bluff twice.  We crossed the river both going and coming.  We rode through spider webs too numerous to count.  And my little and ring fingers were only mildly tingling from the swelling in my wrist impinging on the nerves!  It's a win in my book.  And, nope, we won't be back!  But soaking wet leather boots are a very good excuse to clean and condition them, which they've desperately needed.

High Island Creek

Hiatus

So, it turns out that having a (human) baby greatly reduces one's available free time for writing blogs (and many, many other things!).  It's been  2 years since I last posted - our son is now almost 20 months old.  We've moved, the boys are back in boarding, and Daria returned to her breeder's herd.  I'm going to just pick it up where I left off, writing posts as I can and sharing my horse life with my readers.

Run for the Cactus 50 mile Endurance ride, August 17, 2019

Rhio is 19 and still going strong!  I guess an old(er) rider and horse team can learn new tricks, as I changed a couple things with his protocols for the ride and he scored better on his vet card all day than he has in the past few years.

Ride prep starts the week before the ride.  Unfortunately, a new batch of hay at the stable gave both boys a bit of diarrhea and "gurgly tummy," so I started them on a new-to-me probiotic ASAP.  It was wonderful!  It really seemed to make a difference, and I kept Rhio on it all week and through the ride weekend.  I have used probiotics frequently over our years of competition, but I haven't felt that I could decidedly tell a difference with prior ones.  With this product, he was eating extremely well, and even ate most of a flake of alfalfa-grass mix hay in the trailer on the way to the ride on Friday night!  That is a very rare thing for him, as he is not a good eater on the trailer.

Beet pulp mash with electrolytes and probiotics in the week leading up to the ride. 

I also started syringing him with plain kaolin-pectin (the pink stuff - it smells like bubble gum but the flavor is pretty mild/bland) a couple days before the ride, to get him used to the taste.  It's a buffer used to help make the electrolytes less harsh on the stomach.  He hates being syringed and in the past has refused to eat after I've given him electrolytes via syringe at rides.  I'd decided to pre-mix my powdered electrolytes with the kaolin-pectin at home in the blender, then add a bit of liquid electrolyte solution at the ride, and dose before and during the ride via syringe.  I'd been just putting the powder into his mashes, which he typically doesn't consume very readily during the ride,  anyway.  So the few days of just the pink stuff did acclimate him to it, and dosing during the ride was easy-peasy!  And, even more important, he kept eating!

Kaolin-pectin 

Besides getting Rhio ready with diet/supplement tweaks, I also washed my girth, saddle pads, and half chaps.  Packed everything needed for 1 horse, 2 dogs, 2 adults, and 1 toddler to camp, eat, sleep, poop, and ride for the weekend.  Prepared food to feed all said beasties, two- and four-legged.  And completed various other myriad packing and prepping tasks.  It truly takes me all week, in between daily life, working, and being a toddler mom.  We had a plan to leave immediately after my husband finished work (i.e. I'd be all loaded and waiting for him in the back alley with the truck and trailer, since work is 30 minutes from home in the direction we were headed.) It was going to be a 4 hour drive, and we'd be getting there at or after dark.

And then, my carefully constructed plan imploded with both hubby and I getting late patients, and then hubby deciding he and toddler and 1 dog would stay home, after all.  So, I hurriedly unpacked a bunch of the stuff, fetched the toddler from daycare before they closed, went to the stable to load Rhio (with a small meal of Outlast and a handful of senior for his tummy prior to hauling), and meet hubby back at home to hand off the toddler.  Whew.  Ok.  Ready to go.  It's only 6:45 pm, 1 hour and 15 minutes after I'd planned to be on the road.

The trip was uneventful, with Rhio hauling calming and quietly as he usually does, Smokey riding shotgun, and little traffic.  I pulled into ride camp at 10:30 pm, having no difficulty finding it (whew! my night vision is TERRIBLE) and even saw a spot to park right there next to the entrance drive.  I pulled in, trying to be as quiet as possible, and proceeded to get Rhio's electric pen set up, his mash made, hay and water fed for the night, the tent set up, and my contacts out and teeth brushed in exactly an hour, under a beautiful full moon.

11:30pm Friday night, all settled in for the night

I slept poorly, as I usually do the night before a ride, and "helped" by the extremely bright moon keeping the inside of my tent nearly light enough to read without a headlamp.  I checked my phone many times, worried I'd overslept my 4:20 alarm.  When 4:20 rolled around, I got up and got dressed in my riding clothes,  put Rhio's hoof boots on, and then walked up to the office area (in a building with electricity! how nice!) to get my ride card and a map and a quick run down of the vital information for the 50 miler.  One of the vets was ready to vet me in, so I traipsed back to the trailer to grab Rhio, and vetted in, still in the dark.  I'd lugged my vet check stuff up with me as well, so I quickly got that set up for myself, and went back to get ready.  I remembered to eat something, I forgot to take my ibuprofen, and I was ready to head out pretty much at start time of 6am.  It was 6:05 when I left camp, the last 50 heading out on trail.  I knew Rhio would catch up to the next horse in no time, which he did.

We rode briefly with the second-to-last horse before Rhio decided he had more horses ahead to catch, and we proceeded to catch and pass the next group of 3 riders.  He wanted to keep going, so we stayed just a little ahead of them until the first water stop.  As we arrived, the next group of riders was just leaving, and so Rhio set his sights on those horses, and didn't want to stop, drink, eat, or relax at all.  We caught and passed that group as well, but I knew we weren't going to sustain that pace for the rest of the long first loop (22.5 miles) so I jumped off at the second water stop and waited for the group behind us to catch up.  From then on, all 5 of us rode the entirety of the rest of the ride together.  Which is shocking to me, actually, as I typically do not like riding in groups larger than 3.  But all the horses and all the riders got along so well all day, with zero disagreements or even crabby ears, that it was fun and relaxing to ride together.

Loop 1, about 11 miles in, 7:30am 

Sweet, clear, cool water 

The river! 

Single track - note the yellow and blue ribbons for trail marking. 

Loop 2 - water stop next to a bean field.

The bridge coming and going to/from camp.

The best part of this ride was the river! We stopped here on every loop, and it is undeniably the best water access/drinking/sponging place I've ever seen on a ride.  The water is perfectly clear, the bottom is perfectly firm with zero rocks, and it's level and mostly shallow.  By the third loop (hottest part of the afternoon), we were spending 10 minutes here sponging our horses and letting them cool down.  I'm pretty sure the horses looked forward to the river as much as we did!

The trails were great footing, and a nice mix between knee-knocking single track and two-track were you could easily move out and cruise along side by side.  The only difficulty we had on trail was an irrigation contraption that was spraying water about 15 feet above us, from the other side of a row of trees.  So we couldn't see the machinery, but we could first hear it (what's that noise?) and then see the water spraying through the tops of the trees (!!), and then feel the water hitting us and the trail (!!!!).  Wow, that was an "obstacle" that I had never dreamt of seeing.  Basically, we had to run through a giant sprinkler on our quivering horses.  But, we did all survive.

Loop 3

We finished in great shape with a ride time of 7:36.  All five of us completed with happy, sound horses.  Rhio ate and drank like a champ all day, took his syringed electrolytes without much fuss, and had the best vet scores he's had in forever (all As on hydration parameters and gut sounds the entire day!).  We had a few rubs - a slight girth rub after loop 1 which caused me to switch from mohair to fleece and add a coating of zinc oxide ointment to his armpits, and a very minor amount of rubbing from sand in the gaiters of his hind hoof boots, so that I pulled his boots and did the last loop barefoot.  I got a few rubs myself, more than Rhio actually, and am still nursing along a very bad rub on the side of my neck from my hydration pack (see my last post on the blog, from 2017!).

Overall, I absolutely loved this ride and can't wait to come back.  I'd forgotten how much I love to ride 50s.  And I am very proud of my pony.  We are within 1 year and 1 more endurance ride of both our Decade Team and 1000 Endurance Miles with our national governing body, American Endurance Ride Conference.

And, hubby and toddler survived their boys' weekend at home just fine.

The morning after

Completion prizes - first aid kit for the diaper bag, big hook for the hay bag (or whatever), and a new jelly scrubber (I've lost all my other ones).  I couldn't have gotten a more perfect bag of stuff!