The entire trip looked a little iffy all week with more big storms and lots of rain moving in.
Originally our trip was scheduled for Whitewater State Park which was a short hour and a half east of us in Liberty, In. They have two big lakes to fish or boat in and a nice 8 mile loop trail with a creek crossing.
Here's the horseman's campsite Camp.
However, with all the rain moving in it looked like a solid two days of rain there and some horribly muddy trails so instead we went WAY north to Tippecanoe. It added another 45 minutes to our very very boring drivetime but it looked like the park missed more of the heavy rain and the footing up there is all sand so it has better drainage and typically less mud.
We left Saturday morning and ended up setting up camp in the rain.
This is awning 3.0 I bought a bigger tarp and hooked the tarp on the opposite side of my trailer which provided better rain coverage.
Not shown is awning 4.0 where I used longer ropes attached to the top of the PVC poles. This awning stood up under some gusty winds and medium heavy rain. Still pretty good for about 40 bucks including buying the new tarp.
An unknown for me was at this camp we had two separate sites, with my friend bringing her husband horse for my boyfriend. Stella needed to camp at her own site, next door to but not shoulder rubbing distance to her best trail buddy Twigs. She gets a little herd bound and I wasn't sure if 40 feet would be too much for her to handle.
Thankfully, she had zero problems staying in her electric pen as long as I kept the food coming!
We went out on the trails twice, they were a little muddy and we had my boyfriend with me who hasn't totally mastered trotting so we kept it slow this trip. As usual Stella wanted to be in the lead and she was quite confused at how slow we were going. Our two companions ended up doing lots of trotting to keep up with her going places walk! I did put her in back several times so my friend could get her horse moving out and so Stella could keep working on riding wherever. She really hates it. She wants to crowd the horse in front to push them faster, pins her ears the entire time, and constantly weaves back and forth looking for a wide enough opening to trot on out in front. Poor mare.
She did get "stuck" in the lead 3 or 4 times but I was able to get her moving with a little persuasion and she didn't need a lead so tons and tons of progress there! We flushed out a few deer but never ran across any turkeys although my friend saw them in camp in the AM.
I would have liked to stay camping longer but it ended up being a good time for everyone!
Thats funny you say the last of the year because this is about to be my first few of the year! I HATE heat and prefer the chill, haha
ReplyDeleteWe don't go if it's going to be in the 90s but I don't have heat in my trailer and this trip we tent camped with it getting down to 52 at night. I was warm in my sleeping bag but I'm not sure I'd want to tent camp in cooler weather than that!
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