Ride #4 - Pam, Rendi, Kathi
It was a fine autumn day, 63° when we got to the lake, and slightly breezy when we weren't in the woods. The parking lot at the trailhead was crowded, and all the campsites were full of trailers with living quarters, and horses in the pens and on picket lines. For the first time we saw boats in the lake too.
There were many people and horses on the trails; this was the first time we'd passed and been passed. Sometimes the same people were ahead of us, and later they'd be behind; they must have taken the blue trails while we stayed on the main pink trail.
We started out on the wide trail, crossed the bridge, then the step pyramid, and the creek which was dry today. We actually crossed the creek several times, and found out that it has a name: Deer Creek.
The creek was as far as we had ever gone before, but today we kept going. And going. And going. We passed "the tractor" - which is an actual rusty tractor at the side of the trail. We saw "the silo" in the lake. Eventually we could see the dam off in the distance and decided we should just keep on going.
We found "the big hill" that the ranger told me about. In fact we went down into several big ravines and each time said "that must be the big hill", but a little further on there would be a bigger slope. The BIG one is truly big, down and then up, and probably crosses the creek at the bottom.
We found the picnic area at one end of the dam, and walked the horses down a path to the water's edge so they could drink. Then we crossed the dam and came to the point where we had turned around on our last ride, and eventually to where the trail met the road back to the trailhead.
It was about 2.5 hours all the way around the lake. Thankfully Dakota went right in the trailer to go home!
