Mustang Saga

Suddenly I have too much to talk about and too many pictures.  Which isn't really something to complain about, right?  It's nice to have some good stuff to talk about.

 I'll start with today.  The kids and I went with Bella out to an easy trailhead in the mountains not far from here.  We ran into a traffic jam on the way there:

 

When we got there Bella was a little concerned about the wild children running around by the creek:

 And she kept a close eye on the crazy dogs too:

Trying to set up for a family portrait:

Look! Even Bella is smiling!

I love her eye in this picture.  She looks like some otherworld creature.

She did so very well with our hike that when we got back to the trailhead I saddled up and we rode.  A teeny-tiny bit anyway.

Isn't she just beautiful?

Little bit of ground work.  She wasn't really with me mentally, which is why we didn't ride much.

Baby Blue, who isn't such a baby anymore, but he sure looks funny here!

Another very short ride at the trailhead.  I wasn't wearing riding boots, I know.  I hadn't thought it would go well enough to ride. 

 

Yesterday Scout's big trail ride at Gold Hill went really well.  We had some issues with fear of puddles but he got better as we went along.  I was proud of him for being so steady.  He only spooked once, and it was slight.  Dang log snuck up on him out of nowhere.  Don't know why that log was any different from the hundreds of other logs we saw.

Big fat fella makes my big saddle look small:

Going places:

Beautiful places:

Getting some love:

Old log cabin from the gold rush days:

Love it when the sun shines down on my horse's ears:

Tired guy:

Lakhota taking a break:

Walking back on the road:

We had to cut our ride short and take the logging road back rather than finish the loop on the trail as planned.  It was just taking too long and we had kids to get back to.  Maybe I'll get to do the whole loop one of these days.  As it was we did 8.2 miles in about 4 hours (I walked about half that to spare Scout's fat baby self and his tender feet on the gravel road).

Here's the Everytrail map of our trip.  This started out as Palouse Trail System # 763 and turned left at Palouse Trail # 215.  The Forest Service trail number was 3289. If you want to do a lot of riding in this area I highly recommend buying the Forest Service map.  This trail was very well maintained with just some areas where the branches are in your face, but it was quite slick and somewhat steep, with a few places where the trail is on an edge that drops off.  There are puddles (terrifying puddles - ask Scout) and two water crossings.  Not a terrible trail at all but a little bit challenging.  I wouldn't want to do it on a horse that wasn't sure-footed or didn't listen well, and I wouldn't take someone on it if they didn't really enjoy trail riding.  If we had gone back down on the slick trail rather than the road I think it would have been pretty challenging and possibly dangerous on a tired colt.  I might wait for a dry spell to go back and try the whole loop.