It was a beautiful day Easter Sunday, and the girls decided to do a very long 5 hour loop in the Marshall area of Boulder. We began at our friend Jill's house out on Marshall Road and headed east towards Cherryvale Road, and the giant hay meadow. We crossed streams (watch for those sneaky ducks) and ditches, then took a break at the cattle ball waterer near Cherryvale to let the horses play. Like bobbing for apples, they dip the large blue balls until they can get to the water... Jane's young Arabian, Kinney, found it a bit unsettling though! As we walked down Cherryvale Road to the open space access gate, cars buzzed passed us, totally absorbed in their mission to get whereever they needed to go with total disregard for others, so take care on this section of the ride.
The hay field is a cattle nursery this time of year, so we gave all those young mothers a wide birth—as not to disturb. Picking up a lovely canter, we swung around and headed south towards Marshall Mesa. We did some nice steady climbs, to work those hind ends, then headed west towards the old cattle tunnel that allows safe passage under Highway 93. The next ditch to cross is challenging and Nico's hind easy boot was sucked off, a bit of fishing was necessary. After we all crossed safely we continued east toward Dowdy Draw where we practiced some bridge crossings and used the outhouse facilities.
Continuing North we passed through the Dowdy Draw parking lot. It was sad to see that cars were parked in the horse trailer assigned spots, and no horse trailers were there. We ran into a very charming City of Boulder Ranger who was writing tickets to cars parked along the road and we suggested he also ticket the cars parked in the designated trailer spots. Unfortunately that is out of his jurisdiction, go figure! We suggested that perhaps the City of Boulder make up a warning or informative flyer that can be placed on cars parked in designated spots. The Boulder County Horse Association worked hard to get these few trailer spaces that are sprinkled about open spaces in Boulder County, and it is very disheartening to see the lack of respect other open space users have for horse trailer designated parking areas. As we headed back northeast, we traveled along the Mesa trail and crossed back over Highway 93 to Jill's house.
We cleaned up the horses, put them in holding pens, and then sat down to enjoy smoked salmon and dill Havarti on crackers, sipping iced coffee on Jill's front porch while enjoying the conversation with old friends and the lovely foothills view— thanks Jill!
Suggestions: shoes or hoof protection, part of this trail system is rocky. Carry an easy boot if you can, we wound up needing one for a pulled font shoe. Watch out for those ducks hiding in ditches. Beware of misbehaving dog owners, we ran into a loose dog not under voice and sight command.
