MaumeeValleyRide.blogspot.com - Full Story
Last year we had just awful weather for our first Maumee Valley PI ride, so we were certainly hoping for better this year. Because of the down turn in the economy we shorted it to a two day ride this year so as to cut some expenses. Still, we didn’t have as good of a turn out as we hoped, but we sure did have a good time by all that did make it to the ride. The Daniel Boone Distance Riders put on this ride, and it is a mandatory ride for members to work one day so as to qualify for our year end, 300 mile award. Therefore, we have lots of workers to make things go smoothly for the riders. No waiting for anything!
DBDR have team competition too, so we end up taking turns working as teams, and riding as teams, so as to gather as many points as possible. It is all in fun, but also competitive!
First days ride, weather was great. A little muggy, but the trails were shady and lots of running water in the creeks for the horses to drink and sponge from. The trails here are just beautiful. We had a controlled start up the worst section of the whole trail, then off we went. I was riding along with the front group, when Connie Caudill (one of the trail markers) started noticing that ribbons had been pulled down…a lot of ribbons! Yikes! It is really hard to understand why people take delight in sabotaging our trails… Connie is really good at marking trails well enough so that even if you are flying, you cannot miss a turn… But, alas, these saboteurs were a dedicated bunch and lots of turn markers and ribbon were either stomped in the ground, or gone completely. So, Connie and Bill Wilson, another trail marker started tearing off the ends of ribbon that was up, to remark as we went along. So it was trot, canter, stop, trot, canter, stop for several miles until the trail picked up again. I was sticking with the trail markers for sure… I HATE getting lost. And so were my granddaughter, Paige, and her sponsor Vickie Crance. They usually go a bit slower, since Paige’s horse has just started his endurance career and had only one 50 under his belt. But he looked good and they too didn’t want to get lost in the maze of trails. Actually, there was quite a group of us, nine if I remember right. But what about the other riders who had dropped back? There were fifteen I believe in the 50, and about 12 or so in the 25 miler. At least there was a very good map with numbered trail markers. So hopefully, everyone had one handy.
When we got back to camp, my GPS clicked over to 18 miles. Very accurate mile calculation on trail manager’s part! The Vet Check went smoothly, (lots of workers :-)) and there was a wonderful cool breeze right there. How nice of Mother Nature. Paige and Vickie had dropped back a bit when the trail looked like it hadn’t been touched by the bandits, but came in shortly after us. All looking good, Yeah!...
Read more here:
http://maumeevalleyride.blogspot.com/2011/06/maumee-valley-2011.html
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