Had a reasonably good night sleep, though not quite as good as yesterday. Got up around 9:00, did chores and had breakfast, got on the trail by about noon, later than we hoped but still not too bad. The horses seemed eager, which was a good sign we didn't overwork them yesterday (could hardly do that only being out an hour!), and we headed out with a plan to do most of the Orange Trail, about 8 miles worth. Headed out the Blue Trail to get there, and the first part of that is mostly an old tarmac road, then eventually turned into some really nice Florida-style trails, with pines intermingled with short palms. Lost our way once, when we headed up a trail that turned into a dead end at some private property, so we doubled back and saw that the "official" trail had signage of being a "designated" trail, and we got back on track. Went a bit further, and came across another split in the road, and took the one that seemed to have the "designated" sign, but that actually took us off the path we had originally planned, but it didn't really make any difference, as long as we were riding! We soon came to an intersection, and ran across two women who had lost their horses. They were on the ground at the time, and something spooked the animals and they took off, running (the women hoped) all the way back to camp. We gave them a bottle of G2 and told them if we round their horses we'd pony them back to them, or if we got all the way back to camp we'd send out the troops to pick them up. Then we abandoned our plans of the Orange trail and headed straight back to camp on the blue trail, which was almost four miles back to camp anyway. We did a lot of trotting and cantering, which was wonderful, our horses were simply brilliant the entire way (although my Apollo was a bit spooky most of the day, so we did a lot of sudden side-stepping), until we finally reached camp. There we discovered that two Rangers and a sheriff's deputy were already on the case. Apparently a driver along I-75 had spotted a rider-less horse running along the easement and called it in, so by the time we arrived back in camp, one horse had already been caught. The other was caught moments later, and someone had been sent out to retrieve the two women who had been left behind. So our trip wasn't for nothing, but it didn't change our plans considerable. We'll just have to pick up the trails we missed on Monday, for tomorrow we have plans to meet some friends for brunch in Naples. Truly enjoyed the trails, though, they were a very nice mix of palms and pines, sand and grass and occasional tarmac, with lots of opportunities for trotting and cantering. Though it was a shorter ride than we had anticipate, the fact that so much of it was at a faster pace than usual meant everyone got a much needed workout! Got back by 2:30, gave the horses another bath (having finished trimming Apollo's feet this morning), got them settled in, and had an early, relaxing evening, catching up on our PVR's episodes of Vegas, before finally retiring about 11:00.
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