After an even better night sleep last night, and a good breakfast this morning, we saddled up (I went back to my regular saddle, which took a few minutes to re-fit) and headed out the back gate (which appears to be the only way to exit the campground without trying to get over a cattle guard), then circled north to pick up the loop trail at the closest point to the campground. We headed west first, a little disappointed to see they had put some small pea gravel down on the entire trail (on top of lovely sand... go figure,) but later it actually helped us stay on track a bit, as it was often the only thing that clued us as to it being the right trail whenever we came to an intersection of other trails (which was often!) As long as we followed the gravel, we managed to stay on track. My Google-made trail was perfect for the first half of the loop, then got off quite a bit on the second half because of a wrong turn I made, but we just kept following the gravel, and the posts that popped up at opportune moments with HH on it, and that kept us on track. At one point we saw some cattle, and when they saw us, a few started heading down a road in the general direction of where we were headed. Now, although they have a lot of quarter horse in them, my horses haven't really been around cattle that much, and Apollo started to get a bit excited when he saw them, and in particular when they headed for us. As they came down the road, we realized that we would have to cross that road directly in front of them in order to stay on the trail, and it became a test of timing. I didn't want to hurry Apollo along (it's never a good idea to teach a horse to run when it gets nervous), so I actually slowed him down to let him get a good look at them, except that meant they were getting closer to the spot where we would intersect with them. Fortunately, we made it to the crossing while the cows were still about 50-60 feet away, then Apollo started moving up the trail sideways so he could keep on eye on the critters behind him. Once they ignored him and passed us, he settled down again. Later on, we ran across a lost dogie near the trail, and he handled it with much more dignity, probably because there was only one, and it was small. As for the trail, other than the gravel, it was wonderful! Very surprising actually. We thought that because the terrain appeared to be mostly grassland that it would be a fairly boring ride, but the trail managed to weave itself through practically every copse of trees on the tract. Some were copses of oaks, others Aspens. In between we were able to trot and canter regularly, which my horse really got a kick out of, since we had been doing mostly walking while my niece was here. We didn't get lost during out three hour ride because we followed the gravel, but there were obviously a lot of other trails out here without gravel, which would provide more interest for anyone staying longer than the few days we will be here. Nevertheless, it is a small tract, so the variety would be limited. Though water is a bit of a challenge, this is a very nice campground, and will definitely stay on our North Dakota list!
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