Another Sunday in the Pines

 I'm sure this is getting boring to read by now, but I am living for Sunday trail rides down in Camden. It's just perfect, gorgeous hunt country with sandy trails, fun jumps, and paths made for cantering down two by two grinning like a silly kid I think I still am. 

The hardest thing for me right now with Goose is trailer accessibility. I board at a farm that I love and that suits us, but with very little rain this year, our pasture is shot which isn't a concern for feeding the horses (hay exists for a reason) but it leaves the ground feeling like concrete. I'm ver protective of Goose's legs, and riding on property has become a leisure activity, trying to maintain some semblance of fitness so when I go off property we aren't both blobs. 

Until I can afford a truck and trailer of my own, I rely heavily on my friends, and thank goodness for them. Amanda and I go way back as adventure buddies, Kalyn is usually my ride to most things these days, but they both board at another farm now and I'm obviously at the mercy of our schedules aligning. Usually our fun ideas align, and I'm never offended when someone isn't available to go somewhere. I'm thankful that my friends hitch up and haul me and Goose around, and never want to take advantage of it. 

Enter Alyson's new purchase: a truck! We've been talking about it for a year. She has a nice trailer and was hauling with her SUV, but it wasn't safe enough to haul two horses in it, especially one as large as Goose. She found an amazing deal and scooped up a gorgeous black F150 and promptly told me we're planning all the adventures we can fit in. Score! Goose and Pari are the best forced friends too, and make excellent adventure buddies. Alyson and I have similar backgrounds, and have similar goals for our older gentlemen, so I'm really excited for some of the plans we've been discussing. 

I forgot a truck picture (seriously I'm the worst blogger) so have another selfie.

We loaded up Sunday and drove the hour and change down to Camden. My endurance blogging friends would find these trails exceedingly boring, but for a lovely Sunday hack, there's nothing better, in my opinion. Where we are outside of Charlotte, there aren't too many options for trail riding. Cane Creek Park has a lot of dogs whose asshole owners let off leash (there was a huge incident earlier this year with a dog attacking a carriage horse - I really don't want to ever have that happen to us) and it's so rocky its not a favorite. The Greenway is fine too, but again, washed out trails, packed with people oftentimes, and the trails are so poorly marked that the second you go out you'd better start finding your way back because it might take you hours. There are a few places to XC school within an hour of the farm so those are good options too, but I was so spoiled by the gorgeous trail systems I had access to in NJ, that nothing down here really compares and it leaves me wanting. Camden feels similar to the Pine Barrens in NJ, so hey, I'll take it. 

Goose is so game for adventures at this point. He hops off the trailer, looks around, sighs deeply, and is happy to stand tied to the trailer while we sort out tack. Nothing much phases him these days, especially at Camden. In short order, we had mounted and headed off up the power lines, walking a good 20 minutes before ducking to the left into the gorgeous pines. 

Walking the power lines, this goes FOREVER and trails duck off to the right and left to go through the pines.

We had both agreed a leisure ride was what we were after with some trotting and cantering and we'd pop a jump if we saw one. The problem is, we see all the inviting jumps at the start of our ride before we're warmed up, so by the time we feel ready to jump we've left all the smaller options behind (some of the ones in the woods are just super wide and around 3', Goose could do it but eh I don't really want to at this fitness level). We agreed that next time we'd warm up with trot and canter sets up the power lines, get jumping in the start of our ride, and have leisure time later. Love a good plan! 

We didn't run into anyone on trail for the majority of time, and wandered around looking at the trail names we recognized and starting to put together a list of favorites to mark where we should aim for in future rides. We figured out which trails were loops, which led too deep into the woods and would take us too long to get back, and had glorious canters down sandy, sun dappled trails. Bliss. 

All of my photos look like this, sorry it's so boring! But seriously the MOST fun to canter down these lanes.

Towards the end of our ride, we were winding our way back towards the power lines to find the trailer. Two women ended up popping out next to us on a connecting trail, and proceeded to let their horses follow us. Which, fine, the trails are totally here to share, but with hundreds of acres and countless trails to go down, did they really have to follow us? We even took to making random turns to try to get away from them (Pari wasn't thrilled with having them so close to us where he could hear them chatting) and would have cantered but the sand was so deep where we were it wasn't really a good option. Finally, we crossed the power lines, took off at a canter, ducked right, and kept cantering. Lost them! Again, I have no problem sharing a trail but it should have been pretty obvious to them that we were trying to get away from them. We weren't on a main trail or anything, and we kept turning onto different ones to try to get away. People are so frustrating, I think they just liked dropping their reins and letting their horses follow us from a ways back. 

Goose and Pari, old man friends <3 

We stayed out for a little over an hour and a half before returning to the trailer with sweaty but happy horses. We pulled tack, shared a little picnic, and headed out. 

Heading into winter is leaving me with a sense of dread for mud season. It seems that we can't win down here - it's too dry all summer so the ground is too hard to really ride (see my previous post about bareback wanders), and in the winter, we usually get so much rain that the ground is way too squishy to ride. Where is the happy medium?! All of this could be solved with an arena, but I love where I board for the care, it's affordable, and Goose is so happy. Moving isn't an option so I'll just complain about it here once in awhile and call it a day. Hopefully this winter we'll be able to trailer out a few times a month, I already have some ideas of what farms we can go to and rent the covered arena for an hour, and of course Sundays are for Camden.