Good ride yesterday ...

I hope I have not turned L against endurance riding.   She was a good sport but we went out with thunderstorms to the west of us and L is extremely jittery about lighting.  Well I am not one to go out when the lightning strikes are cracking myself but it was all distant rumbling so I just kept pressing on,  wanted to get some miles on horseback to soothe myself after the workweek stress + my drive over there, running late.  

We got down to the bottom and found a spot L was comfortable with for lightning safety and the rain showed up a few minutes later, started pretty soft which was nice since we had not grabbed ran coats off the horses right away.

Ended up waiting out a 30 to 45 minute rain shower with the horses tied to the hitching rail at the picnic area.   I was getting so much help from the bushes that I put my duster on Shade for a rump rug since she was shivering when I fetched the coats.   One advantage to the aging crap is I run hotter and don't chill so easily myself anymore.  

L still didn't want to ride the ridge because there were clouds over it and we were still hearing thunder rumbling.  So we tried to take the road but it veered too much west when we needed to go north and we found ourselves in a gated (bar across road but open paths around the bar) subdivision of $$$ homes with the road changed from gravel to pavement.  

We still pressed on a ways, there were trails just a few yards off the road most of the time but we were flagging down folks looking for info on how far it would be till we hit the county road we could follow back to the trailhead.  Third car that stopped gal was familiar enough with the area and understood what we wanted to know she said it was seven minutes by car to the gate at that end of the subdivision.   At this point it had cleared up and we had not heard thunder in a while so I persuaded L to just backtrack and take the normal trail.  

So it worked out pretty good, we got about 14 miles on the horses and except for the time under the bushes the weather was great; we never had sun beating down on us and it did not get steamy after the rain shower, but was nice trotting weather.   If L is not scared off I think she'll handle the 30 mile ride on June 22 or 23 just fine and Lady handled the work with no problems.