Another Cold One!

If it took standing on her head :-)

I'd wanted to ride the Centennial Trail earlier this week, but it was just too cold & frozen.  The weatherman kept saying that each day was going to warm up - sure...  Lynn & I decided with the report last night - to ride today.  When we both got up to sub-30's it was obvious that the warming had yet to happen.  There was sunshine though & that made the difference :-)   Lynn had a last minute horse change happen - so was a little late.  Farah didn't mind - there was a Lot of grass at the trail-head!

Our ride out~

First we rode through the little town of Hartford, under Hwy-92 & up onto the trail itself.  Within only a few strides, we knew that the longer ride we'd planned wouldn't happen.  The ground was frozen solid & very slippery.  All the little creeks & wetlands were frozen solid.  The mares were slipping even at a walk & the ground was humped in places from all the hard freezing.

Looking like Winter!

It was strangely quiet & very beautiful though!  This is one of my favorite sections of the trail & it was easy to enjoy the muted colors & watch as the clouds again started to cover the sky.

Dock at Lake Cassidy

The day stayed Cold!  Very cold & even a slight breeze off the lake made it colder & left lots of frost on the leaves further up the trail.  The plan had been to ride to Armar Rd. - but time was running out - there was no way to make any - so we regretfully turned back at Getchell.  I'm going to post our stats here - when I downloaded them I had to laugh at the difference on our ride outward-bound compared to the increase of speed on the return :-)  The turn-back point was at 1:40 min.  Needless to say - the mares knew this was not a point-to-point!

Today's route

It was just so darn good to Get Out again!  The last seven days have been the longest I've been out of the saddle for a very long time.  Farah was full of energy - but besides some nasty looks at Sophie (who was happy to return them!) she seemed happy to be on the trail.

Now that it's actually December - it will be the weather that dictates riding...   Don't you love it?  Not!