Woke up around 4:00 am thinking it was near dawn, discovered that there are many security lights throughout the campground. For those who like all the bells and whistles, with stables and paddocks and water and electricity at every site, this is a perfectly fine place. For those like us, that prefer to feel like we're in a true wilderness, like trailblazers of old, it's a bit too commercial for us. That said, we did have a ride today. The reason I awoke early was because the rain had come in, but it cleared out by 10:00 or so, though remained cloudy the rest of the day. Then the temperature started dropping, so Hubby and I decided to get out quick while the getting was good. After a morning on craigslist and the phone arranging a hay pickup for tomorrow morning, we saddled up and were on the trail by 12:20. We intended to go out the blue trail and come back on the red, the trailhead where we began was wrong, so we ended up on the red trail. NOTE: The red trail, and red/blue combined trail start just behind the kiosk. The BLUE trail starts closer to the entrance by about 100 feet.
While this is part of the Black River State Forest, this area should really be called a forest in development. Almost all of the forest is young, lots of baby trees, lots of evidence of "forest management" (i.e. cleared tree areas), and lots of prescribed burn areas, but that does leave for wide open skies in many places. There are a few areas that are older, like near the campground, but most of the trails (which are more trail than road, thankfully) are among newer trees. The pic above shows one of the more mature areas of the forest.
Trails are well-marked, no problem finding them, and there's a good area to stop about halfway around the most popular route, with a picnic table, which is where we stopped to have a quick sandwich and give the horses a much-deserved apple. The temperature soon started dropping, and on the way back we were heading into the cold north wind, so we were quite happy to get back around 4:00. Cocktails, dinner and a Dish PVR movie and we're set for the night!
