SPRING 2024 RIDE

Happy Spring Yall! I hope everyone is getting a lot of miles in and the weather isnt canceling plans! This year we rode at Heaven's Gate for our Spring ride. This is the first time I have been at Heaven's Gate and did not get rained out!! And that is saying something LOL.... MAYBE.... it was the rain slickers I finally bought and packed with us that kept that bad juju away LOL... Anyway.... trip details!

Day 1, we per usual ride the Flats because it is a short and easy ride to squeeze in on the first day and let the horses stretch their legs after a long trailer ride. Its a great little trail. We had potato soup and grilled cheese for the first night for supper. It was perfect because it was the coldest night of the weekend too. Crazy however, because when we were leaving home, it was snowing in OKC and sunny and 60* at camp LOL.

Day 2 we rode the blue trail since the last year we were there we didn't get very far on it before getting trapped in a thunderstorm 2 miles out LOL... SO we tried it again and it a beautiful little ride!! Its pretty mild, but a step up from the Flats on the level of riding.

That evening we had steak and chicken fajitas!! The steak fajita was from the steer we raised and butchered and they were FANTASTIC!!

Day 3 we rode orange, Cadillac trail- This trail is like blue but a few more hills so its about a step up from blue due to the switch backs on the back side. Oh and btw, If you haven't ever ridden this one, at the tip of one of the switch backs you basically do a 180 at the tree. We lost the trail for a minute at that point and so I wanted to make that as a FYI.

Dinner that night was steaks! Again from our home raised beef and YUM!! Lets just say we ate like kings and queens this trip!!

Day 4 we rode a little bit of everything- Some yellow, black, pink, purple and white. We rode up to the blue hole off of yellow and white and then purple to the hidden falls then pink from the hidden falls to bear hollow, a new trail, it does not show on maprika but it does show on caltopo- This is a long steep climb but the view is SO WORTH IT!!

From Bear hollow we came back down on white to black and back to yellow and home.

We kept it simple for supper and just did burgers for this day.

Day 5 we did not ride but enjoyed a nice church service for Easter Sunday and then loaded everything up and went home for the weekend to join the family for Easter.

When we got home we then turned around and drove back up to holdenville to my papa's house where we had burgers and hot dogs and then went and fished the ponds.

Caught a few bass even with the wind and cloudy weather. They were hungry and fightin hard so it was a fun time! My favorite rod snapped tho! So that sucked, but least I can replace it!

I have visited Heaven's Gate 3x with no complaints but I do have some this weekend. Part of it is a "shit happens" but by the end of it we were kinda pissy about it if im being honest.

When we got to camp, i had hauled a horse for my aunt to ride. Her pens were located behind our trailers where mine were on the other side of the neighboring trailer which was fine but I did not want to separate horses because I did not want anyone getting hurt or breaking panels. There was an extra pen not taken so we put Jaxi there next to ours. Nothing was said about it and she was there for 3 days. We got there wednesday and Friday when we came back to camp, the trailer in 6 left and a new rig came in and they had 3 horses so the camp host moved jaxi's stuff to what would be the original pen. I wouldn't of been so annoyed if they would have said something 3 days ago or day of even at that.... the camp host didn't say anything and then we come back from riding to see our stuff messed with. So then, we move all 3 horses to the far side of camp by the covered pens.... being the bigger person... the people who came in... then left not 24 hours later.... by then we course are at our last night so i wasn't moving pens again....

What set the bar was before hand... whoever had the pens prior hadn't cleaned them out and also had laid shavings and hay in the pen so for 2 days me and my husband cleaned out 3 HEAVY full wheel barrows out of each pen... so... there is that... we clean the pens of previous peoples mess and then got kicked out of our pens.... for then... the people who left to have also left those pens a mess and i guess idk if it were their friends or what but they ended up cleaning them.

We also had ran out of propane mid shower after bringing awareness that the propane may be low because we had a luke warm shower the night before- that one is the kinda shit happens scenario but the pen arrangement really irritated me. I didn't say anything though- we just made due with it. And while im bitching here i'm not bitching about the camp as a whole lol before yall lose your minds... It was just the experience for this year and next time we stay- I will reserve the newer creek sites where there are 2 pens per site so horses don't have to be split apart. But it is what it is at this rate and well... shit happens.

Although with the mishaps our trip was still a great trip and we couldnt of asked for better weather!! I did also map what i rode out on GAIA- but im not going to start sharing this map until i either get the rest mapped out or if D'anna has interest in doing so to map it out herself. I had mentioned using Gaia and she said she did not like the operation of the app so we may eventually get it on there but If im the one doing it it will take me a very long time to get it completed!