Trail Adventures: Rudolf Bennitt Lake Loop

I guess I'll be light on content for the next two months, so might as well write about the last fun rides I had *sob* OK yes I'll stop being dramatic. My appointment with ortho is this afternoon and I'm hoping I'll have more info about how restricted my activity needs to be/how long the damn boot will be on. 

Last Saturday the weather was nice, and things had dried out a bit from the rain dump earlier in the week, so the group of ladies I trail rode with a few weeks back got together again! Since I drove last time, the person I picked up last time returned the favor and stopped to get us :) she has a very lovely 2+1, and I was a little concerned about whether it would fit into our driveway turn (my rig barely fits and the 2+1 is longer, I would assume). Since my road is pretty quiet, especially early on a Saturday, we arranged to load on the straightaway in front of my house and DH came down to make sure nobody flew around the corner into us. To facilitate things, I packed everything up on the golf cart to drive down. 

"what, this isn't for me?" - Lady

Safety third... I drove the golf cart down and just led Ruby alongside and let her graze while we waited for our ride :)

Then I realized I forgot my garmin on the charger and had to sprint back up, so I left them down at the end of the driveway haha. 

I um... might have forgotten about the fact that this lovely trailer had a RAMP and Ruby hasn't been on a trailer with a ramp since she came out from CA a DECADE ago... luckily the other straight stall plus the box had horses so she decided after about 3 seconds of consideration that it was probably safe and followed me on up. When we got to the trailhead, we ended up opening the box up so I could lead Ruby forward down the other ramp. This mostly just solidified for me that I WANT A 2+1, it was great. Loved it. That will hopefully be a "sometime between now and retirement" purchase, since my current trailer is paid off and works just fine, lol. 

We took a slightly different loop this time as one of the horses hadn't been out in a while and we wanted to ensure he didn't get overtired. The loop we took passed the lake, which I think is one of the nicest parts of the trail! We all swapped off and I think every horse got to lead for a bit. We passed some hikers, and a solo guy with a dog who ended up spooking the mare who was leading at the time (the guy was in dark clothes, a few steps off the trail crouched over holding his very wolfy-looking dog, so I don't blame her for being a bit startled), but aside from that, minimal incidents! 

Love this view!

At the end we all hung out and shared some seltzers/beers, chatted with our parking lot neighbors (who apparently breed reining horses), and generally just had a lovely afternoon! Soon it was time to head home, and after a little encouragement (in the form of the other horse getting on the trailer first lol) Ruby walked up the ramp like a champ and headed home!