I’m a bit late in updating this, in maryland we were almost exclusively on the c&o canal which goes from Washington DC to Cumberland. It’s a perfect start place as there’s camp sites with water pumps every 5 miles or so, although ringo prefers the river water.
We’ve had a mix of hot weather and thunder storms where we get soaked to the skin and take days to get the equipment dry.
Ringo started off a bit hesitant and stopped dead if he saw anything other than a cyclist in front of him but got a lot better as the week went on, now he ignores the deer that jump out 10 ft in front of him. The only thing he’s actually freaked out at was a tiny rabbit but that was one terrifying rabbit. I’ve been trying to get photos of some of the animals I come across but anything faster than a turtle has been difficult. He still tries to spin every now and again and trots very broken stop and start.
We’ve met some amazing people who have helped with a stable for ringo and a bed for me or some horse feed. Even just someone to speak to in the evenings as it gets a bit lonely with just ringo to talk to. We’re to fast for the walkers and far to slow for the cyclists. Every now and again we see the same person and say hi but that’s not very often.
We’ve had a few detours for supplies but generally stay on the trails, we got followed 5 or 6 miles in total by a police cruiser in shepherdstown to slow down the traffic for us which was awesome and there’s the park ranger who jumps out of bushes pretty much as soon as I’ve got my tent set up in a no camping area, especially early on we camped in a lot of places campings not allowed but having a horse makes it far more difficult to find a large enough area of his tether. We also got assaulted in a campsite and the police took 2 hours to come and just said that as they didn’t see it happen they can’t arrest anyone which I find ridiculous as his family were also saying he did it. But I’m not injured so I wasn’t going to press charges, I just wanted him out of the camp site so it didn’t happen agains.
Peter 