After a pretty good night's sleep, as the temps dropped nicely into the 50's and it was pretty quiet here (we're the only ones here!), we got a late start out on the trail, after 1:00, but we weren't planning on going that far, and ended up going even less far than we had planned due to trail obstacles. We started out on the south part of the Willow Creek loop, then along the trail leading to Harney's Peak (the high point in the Black Hills), which quickly got rocky and steep, which we weren't exactly in the mood for, and not what the trail brochure described. After a long climb, the turnoff to Willow Creek-Rushmore came upon us, and that promptly started downhill again, also very rocky. After just a short way, maybe a quarter mile, we came across some serious deadfall, with several tall pines across the trail. We managed to get around them by cutting through the woods (following a makeshift trail that other horses had evidently cut through), but it was quite a long way off the main trail before we made it back to the trail, and through some very bad ground, with many smaller obstacles along the way. We got back to the main trail, and we were probably no more than another 150 feet or so before we ran into ANOTHER section of bad deadfall. Hubby and I just sighed, turned around and headed back. If we were desperadoes running from the law, I might have risked it, but we were just out pleasure riding, for goodness sake, we don't want to risk injuring our animals on such a dubious trail! We climbed up again, then down again, until we finally got back on the nice, north side of the Willow loop back to camp. It was a reasonable two hour ride, but not as enjoyable as we would have like, because the footing was so bad for much of the trip. When I compared where we went on my GPS with the map, it turned out the trail had actually changed, and the part where I guess it was supposed to have a gentler slope was no longer marked on the trail. Bummer! This could really be a great place to ride if they made some smaller loops and went around a few mountains instead of over the top of them (if that's possible). One good thing here, though, is it's about 10 degrees cooler here than down on the plains, so now we're considering whether we want to leave for Nebraska so soon, or maybe stick around for a little longer until the weather breaks a bit. I'll have to do some research, though, because I sure don't want to stay here at this over-priced, under-facilitated campground. We spend some time transferring water from the spigot on the horse trough to the RV so that I could do some laundry, and needed the drill pump and numerous hoses to accomplish it, but at least it didn't take too long, and I did get a load of laundry done before settling down for the evening.
After a pretty good night's sleep, as the temps dropped nicely into the 50's and it was pretty quiet here (we're the only ones here!), we got a late start out on the trail, after 1:00, but we weren't planning on going that far, and ended up going even less far than we had planned due to trail obstacles. We started out on the south part of the Willow Creek loop, then along the trail leading to Harney's Peak (the high point in the Black Hills), which quickly got rocky and steep, which we weren't exactly in the mood for, and not what the trail brochure described. After a long climb, the turnoff to Willow Creek-Rushmore came upon us, and that promptly started downhill again, also very rocky. After just a short way, maybe a quarter mile, we came across some serious deadfall, with several tall pines across the trail. We managed to get around them by cutting through the woods (following a makeshift trail that other horses had evidently cut through), but it was quite a long way off the main trail before we made it back to the trail, and through some very bad ground, with many smaller obstacles along the way. We got back to the main trail, and we were probably no more than another 150 feet or so before we ran into ANOTHER section of bad deadfall. Hubby and I just sighed, turned around and headed back. If we were desperadoes running from the law, I might have risked it, but we were just out pleasure riding, for goodness sake, we don't want to risk injuring our animals on such a dubious trail! We climbed up again, then down again, until we finally got back on the nice, north side of the Willow loop back to camp. It was a reasonable two hour ride, but not as enjoyable as we would have like, because the footing was so bad for much of the trip. When I compared where we went on my GPS with the map, it turned out the trail had actually changed, and the part where I guess it was supposed to have a gentler slope was no longer marked on the trail. Bummer! This could really be a great place to ride if they made some smaller loops and went around a few mountains instead of over the top of them (if that's possible). One good thing here, though, is it's about 10 degrees cooler here than down on the plains, so now we're considering whether we want to leave for Nebraska so soon, or maybe stick around for a little longer until the weather breaks a bit. I'll have to do some research, though, because I sure don't want to stay here at this over-priced, under-facilitated campground. We spend some time transferring water from the spigot on the horse trough to the RV so that I could do some laundry, and needed the drill pump and numerous hoses to accomplish it, but at least it didn't take too long, and I did get a load of laundry done before settling down for the evening.
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