At first glance, this might have looked like a
train wreck waiting to happen. You get last minute emergency sanctioning for a
cancelled ride. You have a fairly in-experienced ride manager in charge. That
Ride Manager (Kathleen "Lefty" Prescott), breaks her hand the week before the
ride. (She then schedules the corrective hand surgery for the Monday after the
ride in true "Show must go on" tradition) The ride is in a new location. Oh
yeah, and it is scheduled for opening day of Deer Season... What could possibly
go wrong?
Actually, it went off smooth as silk. It was
probably as much fun as AERC can legally allow at a ride.
For many people, their image of Oklahoma is that
the further west of The Beautiful Missouri Ozarks you go, the
flatter, browner and more barren looking the countryside gets. Looking
at a map of Oklahoma might lead one to believe that Lake Carl Blackwell, which
on maps looks like a postage stamp sized body of water, would be surrounded by
tumbleweeds and burned out brown clumps of prairie grass. Instead, we found
ourselves riding through nice pretty forests including scenic groves of mature
pine trees. Mature pine trees? Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore!
The meadows were gently rolling and parklike.. Hey wait it was a park! Lake Carl
was a very attractive body of water and we found ourselves looping out to scenic
waterside views on wooded and open meadowed peninsulas. There were even
hills!!!.. The trails had little rock but was fairly technical due to the narrow
twisting trails through all the trees. Are the words " Knee Knocker"
familiar to you? After a few miles you understood that phrase better.
Those on big bodied horses had even more of a handicap on this ride.
Although nobody actually got stuck between two trees and needed to be chainsawed
free, there were some close calls:)
In a perfect demonstration of two equestrian groups
working together, Kathleen Prescott had helped the Competitive trail riders who
had held their ride in the same location the previous week. So several of them
were there to help with the endurance ride. The mutual back scratching
paid off. The trails were incredibly well marked.There were ribbons about every
100 feet in most places.
As for the Camp Ranger, instead of just the limited
tolerance that is often the case when public servants interact with us, the Lake
Carl Ranger helped the entire weekend. When is the last time you saw a
forest ranger sticking around late Saturday night to help pass out completion
awards? Talk about pro-active.
Volunteers popped up to make it run smoothly. Great
food...The weather was perfect. Good vetting as usual...People riding hard, but
taking good care of their horses... In short a good time was had by
all. Next year, when you see this ride on the schedule, think
about coming. It was worth the trip... Oh
yeah, there was no hunting allowed in the park, so we saw lots of deer on trail.
