Sunday, July 25, 2010

We had a great weekend out in the mountains. My parents brought their new motorhome. It's really nice. The first night we left the horses home (this is only 1/2 hour from home) so we could leave camp and go search for huckleberries in the morning. No luck. Are we too early? I think we just didn't find the right spot.

After searching for huckleberries we went home to feed and water and pick up Tonka and Cisco. I have to tell you, if you're horse camping and need to take forage, take hay cubes. They're awesome! Last time we took hay and they'd made a big mess we had to clean up. This time all I had to scoop up were a few piles of poop and the horse area was clean. I soaked them with water because their dryness worried me, and it's a good way to help with hydration away from home.

Liam had insisted that he wasn't going to ride and I wasn't going to bring Soxy (and clean up after her) if that was the case. But he decided he did want to go along on our morning hike/ride, so we each gave up our horses for a little while. My stepdad came along on foot and outdid the horses. He's in great shape - just climbed to the top of Mount Adams last weekend.

Here's John leading Liam on Cisco:

John riding:

John leading Liam on Tonka:

I swear, I did do some of the walking. John had already gotten down for Liam to ride Cisco but Liam wanted to ride Tonka and John didn't want to mount back up so I rode Cisco for a little while.

When we got back we were all HOT, so we played in the cold mountain creek for a while.

John and I got to go on an evening ride too, and it was really nice. The moon was HUGE coming up over the mountains, and while we followed the switchbacks and went in and out of the trees we got to watch it rise several times over different ridges. There were little bats flying around us and when we got back it was very dark in our campsite in the trees. Got the horses put to bed and slept restlessly all night.

This time I worried a little more about them being tied all night than I usually do, because we'd been having cows come through camp. They'd seen the cows, but I wasn't sure how worried they'd get if they heard crashing in the brush and didn't know what it was. They were fine, just very fidgety and ready to do something in the morning.

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