Day 27, 2001 XP

[imgoneriding@worldnet.att.net]

We're in Utah now.  It was a really nice day, we had a really enjoyable 
ride.  The weather was nice, not quite as hot and we only got rained on for 
a few minutes.  There were some sections of pretty deep mud but overall the 
footing was pretty good.

I rode with Kayla again, she rode Buzzy again.  She's still doing really 
good.  We started again at 5 a.m. and it was still very dark.  We left out 
of Fort Bridger and rode to lunch somewhere near the Kemmerer exit 
:+P.....then we hauled the horses about an hour to Echo Junction in Utah 
and rode the last half of the ride there finishing near Park City -- not 
too far from the Rolls Royce building.  My GPS said 49.6 miles but I didn't 
turn it on right away this morning since it was so dark.  Yesterday my gps 
said we did 52.3 but that included warming the horse up -- we are sure 
getting a lot of long days, just how it works out I guess.

There were only 17 riders today.  First and BC was Linda Tribby, Steph 
Teeter was 2nd then Kayla 3rd and me 4th.  Don't worry we weren't going 
fast, we showed up at lunch in 4:10, blazing trail at a blistering 6+ miles 
per hour!   Barney really had to convince us that we really were in the 
first group of four into the vet check.  Pretty funny.  Trilby didn't ride 
again today, and I found out that the horse that has now done the most days 
is Skoldjur, John Parke's Icelandic -- at 21 days --- 16 of those being 
consecutive.  Next is Carol and Sunny and Kathy and Zane -- they are tied 
or else one apart but I don't know for sure.  Zane has gotten 9 BC's.

After lunch we rode on the rail trail which was pretty neat and really 
pretty.  A lot of it goes along where the Pony Express did, so we got to 
see I-80 but it wasn't so bad since everything is so green and all the 
wildflowers are in bloom and there is water everywhere.  Kayla's horse lost 
a hind shoe in all the mud so we stopped and I put an easyboot on and it 
stayed on till we finished, then he got reshod tonight.

After finishing we went over to Louise's and checked on Cheyanne and loaded 
up provisions then came over to the Heber fairgrounds where we are staying 
the night.  We have hookups and water, and there are plenty of pens for all 
the horses.  Pole bending and barrel racing for those who want some 
entertainment, some of the riders are participating.   I am still a little 
surprised that I haven't needed the third horse yet <knocking on 
wood>.  Weaver is sound and entered for tomorrow, and Rocky finished today 
putting his lifetime mileage also over 4,000 miles -- now he gets two days 
off then starts again the following week scheduled to do two days.

Today was a long day -- we started at 5 a.m., then rode 25 something miles 
(a little over that), then had to haul for an hour after having an hour 
hold and vetting, then rode another 25 miles then hauled to Louise's then 
to Heber and got here about last, set up in time for the 7:00 ride meeting 
and now here it is nearly 9 p.m. and we have to get up early tomorrow so we 
can go to the 5:20 a.m. ride meeting to find out where exactly it is we are 
hauling to in order to start tomorrows ride.  The horses will have to be 
loaded and tacked up and ready to go by then.

The ride tomorrow is supposed to be a really nice one, it's all in the 
mountains on nice singletrack trail so everybody is really looking forward 
to it.  It's all marked with trail markers, no GPS -- let's hope we don't 
all get lost! ha ha

Guess we better go figure out who is hauling whose horse to the start 
tomorrow morning.........g'nite!

Happy XP Trails,

Karen
in Heber, Utah
.......only 13 days left!