Mustang Saga

We had a great ride today with the Inland Empire Mustang Horse Club. I'm totally wiped out!



Check out the rocky terrain:

(Most of these horses were barefoot and did fine.)

Would you look at this BEautiful Byootox:
(That there's a Wyoming mustang.)

This one shows rafters on the river and the pretty Arab that came on the ride.

Tonka ears, Raven's sweaty bum, Pepper, Dixie, and a Danny the QH (and you can just barely see the pretty Missouri Foxtrotter):

This is what my sister calls a "sidehill." She can't ride along steep hills like that, they give her vertigo. Add moving water and I bet she'd be sunk. I took this picture just for her. Lovely view, isn't it?

There's that BEautiful black mustang again. She's a stunner. Also Cisco, Dixie, and Pepper.

I think I like this picture best of all. Click to enlarge. It's just good for the soul, pretty horses on a nice trail.

We got lost and had to backtrack and John was tired. (So were the rest of us.)

We were all VERY happy to get a drink at the end of the ride.

There were some very interesting moments. The one that scared me the most was at the end of the ride after we'd left Bob behind (with his agreement, we didnt just desert him) so he could wait for Lea and another person that had decided to walk the rest of the way. Bob's horse came trotting up the trail without him. We stopped her and righted her bosal (she had it through her mouth sideways, poor girl) and then Katie called him to make sure he was alright. Luckily he hadn't been on her. She'd been tied and decided she was just going to leave and catch up to her buddy. Naughty Raven. I really do like that mare though. Some horses you just like right away, and she was one of those for me.

One of the riders caught a branch that went between her leg and the saddle and gouged upward, scarring her saddle seat. She's really lucky her horse didn't plunge off the edge of the trail and that the stick didn't hurt her in a very tender area.

Cisco either threw a fit and threw himself down, or fell down while fighting with John because I'd gotten to far ahead with Tonka. I didn't think Cisco cared that much about Tonka. John was okay, but has a big boo-boo on his hand.

We were pulling a nasty hill when I caught and broke a branch under my knee while getting the back of my neck skinned by another branch that was hiding in a big leafy shrub. I was hunkered as far down over my saddle horn as I could get, helmet forward and eyes closed, because Bob yelled, "Look out for that branch!" I could have done with a slightly shorter horse. Bob was awesome, he went back and cut the branch once we'd all gotten to the top.

Those were the only scary incidents I know of. Overall it was a great ride with beautiful scenery and very good company. We had 6 mustangs, 3 gaited horses, one quarter horse, and one Arabian. Riverside Park in Spokane is a great place to ride. I wish we had something like it here. You can choose to stay on the easy trails for a short ride or rough it and go for a LONG TIME. We went 11.2 miles according to a neat little GPS device. But there are a lot more trails out there.