My sister and I arrived at High Country Horse Camp Sunday evening and got our horses settled in.We met some of the fellow campers then drove to town, 25 miles away to eat dinner.
Monday morning two happy horses greeted us at breakfast time. They loved the large stalls at HCHC and Tango even laid down in the night.
We saddled and packed our lunches and cameras in our saddle bags and headed out up the road. We traveled an old county road for two or three miles then crossed the paved road again and entered the Mt. Rogers area. We were still traveling on the wide cinder road which was a constant climb since leaving camp when we came upon a network of tubing strung around trees. It looked like children had been there playing and left their "toys". As we continued on we came to another area of the same tubing and couldn't imagine what it was until we noticed a faded sign telling this was a Maple sugar water collection area. Having come from an area in Indiana where Maple trees were tapped and sugar water was drained into a bucket this tubing network leading to a large plastic tank was quite a labor saving system and quite interesting to me.
We continued another two miles or so and came into an open area which was Mt. Rogers, the highest point in Virginia. Here we found the Appalachian Trail, this section for hikers only and the VA Highlands Horse Trail. The plan for the day, because I had only been riding about a month and only short rides due to herniated discs and of course Tango who'd had a long vacation due to my health wasn't in top condition either.
Our plan was to take a short loop and return to camp early. On our short ride that took a total of 6 1/2 hours we experienced some beautiful scenery and even encountered a bear cub on the trail who quickly retreated to somewhere, probably a tree nearby. The trail we met him on opened to a small bald with wild cherry trees that had fruit on them and the bears had mutilated the small trees by trying to climb them to retrieve the fruit.
Many places we had to open gates, which normally wouldn't have been a problem on our handy fox trotters that do side pass and back but the gates weren't well designed to be opened from horseback. Still we managed to open about half of them without dismounting.
The riding is rugged and rocky but beautiful and I hope to return again when my fox trotter and I are both in better physical condition.
Kate Shaner
Jamestown, TN
www.mtnmajestyminiatureschnauzers.com
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