Monday, December 5, 2011 - Work, then Ride Day at Mill Creek Park

Been sleeping until 9 or 9:30 since we’ve been here, and it’s been the deepest sleep that we’ve had in weeks, feels great! Got caught up on some work, then finally decided it was time to go riding. The weather was beautiful, and it seems like so long since we’ve been out! Of course, last time Hubby took a little fall, and I was still sore from the previous ride when I fell that we were both a bit tender going out, but we worked the horses through their paces slowly, walking a long way before doing a long jog. There was one time that Apollo started to act up a bit, but I managed to stay on, then I jogged him until he was tired, than finally found a nice spot to break him into a canter that wasn’t accompanied by a rodeo leap first, exactly as I had hoped. We rode for just about two hours, just what we needed to literally "get back in the saddle again." The trails were mostly sand, mostly pretty soft with a few areas more firmly packed. The first trail we went on, the Palmetto Trail, started out along a utility line, then had a nice wooded stretch, but it soon opened up into a mostly clearcut area, so it wasn’t very pretty, but it was well marked and easy to follow with all the other horse sign. Eventually it got back to mixed pine woods. We went as far as the first staging area, then took the blue connector trail (which wasn’t very well marked) back to the yellow Governors trail (which was). A perfect ride for the task at hand!