Posted on 08/07/2007 7:33:14 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
This is a horse chat thread where we share ideas, ask for input from other horsemen, and talk about our riding and horse-keeping. We have a lot of different kinds of riders and horses, and a lot to share, usually about our horses, sometimes about our dogs, gardens and other stuff we do. :~)
I have a ping list for horse threads that are of interest, and MissTargets will ping everyone most mornings. Let MissTargets and/or me know if you would like to be on the ping list.
So... like the previous threads, this is intended as fun place to come and share stories, pictures, questions and chit-chat, unguided and unmoderated and that we come together here as friends.
Previous threads:
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - thread ONE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread TWO!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread THREE!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FOUR
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FIVE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SIX
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SEVEN
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread EIGHT
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread NINE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread TEN
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread 11
New folk and occasional posters, jump right in and introduce yourselves, tell us about your horses, and post pictures if you've got them!
Nice pictures.
The terrain here looks so different then in other pictures you all have posted. Is this a place we’ve not seen before?
That is where Hubby and I went. I will see if I can post pictures tomorrow. I seemed to be a nice outfit. Horses were pretty nice. Just a bunch of grade horses but seemed to be good tempered.
You need a good racking horse!
I think Bob knew, look at the evil grin on his face, he is even showing teeth!
Any kitty updates?
We decided to head off for the overlooks first while it was still RELATIVELY cool (below 90*), then save the shadier places for the heat of the afternoon.
The first cliff shelter we went to was labeled "Indian Shelter and beehive" on the map, so we thought "Cool, must be some kind of rock formation or something. Little did we know how wrong we were. So I guess we can title this part of the story "Attack of the Killer Bees"...
The trail down the cliffside was really pretty, but kinda rugged and rocky, with 3 or 4 switchbacks like this one you can see here...
Then we got into the cliff shelter and it was HUGE...
So we were all just standing around on our horses, talking and taking pictures when somebody noticed the bee hive. It was way up on the ceiling of the shelter, so it was kinda hard to get an idea of exactly how big it was, but the comb was at least 4ft across and hung down in big sheets. I took this pic with a pretty tight zoom so you could see the details...
About that time I noticed Kari kinda swatting at something, and Carolyn makes the remark "Gee, I hope they don't get pissed off", and then all Hell broke loose. I heard the buzzing get louder and saw them swarming around Kari's head and that was all I needed to see. I clapped the spurs to Bob and we lit outta there like a bat outta hell.
We were jumping rocks and dodging trees and he kept on wanting to stop and either rub his head on his legs or lay down and roll because the bees were chasing us and were eating him up. I let him stop and rub them off a time or two on the way up, but could hear the others hollering and running behind me so I couldn't let him stop for too long or they'd get hung up and stung even worse.
Gary and Shane were right behind me when I stopped one time and Shane was trying to rub the bees off on trees. While he was doing this he broke his breast collar and then just about pushed Blade backwards off the cliff, along with Kari and Faith. Then when we lit out up the slope again Shane's saddle slipped and poor ol' Gary was hanging off the side, getting whacked by every tree that went by. Hal and Shirley's horses were getting eat up too and I could hear poor old Kari way in the back, alternately screaming and moaning but I couldn't tell what she was saying. I seriously thought "Oh My God, they're killing her!"
About that time I made it to the top of the cliff and out into the open. I turned around just in time to see Gary hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He'd finally lost the battle with the saddle. And poor Shane was still thrashing about in the bushes, trying to get rid of the bees, and Gary is scrambling trying to get out from under his feet. Then Shirley comes flying by saying the bees are still following and that was all it took to get me moving again. I hated to leave the others but I couldn't help them at that point. It was basically every man or woman for his or her self. Somebody had to make it out alive to reclaim the bodies! ;o)
But luckily it didn't really come to that. We all made it with no serious injuries. Kari got stung under one eye and on the back. Hal got stung over one eye, on the neck and on the arms. Carolyn got stung under her chin and on the back. Gary had scrapes and brusies all over, plus got chigger bites on his butt, probably from when he fell off in the weeds, and I whacked my good thumb on something and now it's swollen.
But we lived and we got a good story out of it, and I get to rag on Kari for all the screaming she was doing, so what more can you ask for?
Pinging you all to the pics in post 9148.
I’ll post some more later. Gotta do at least some work here. ;o)
Man - this is never a good sign on a trail ride report!
Hard core. I don't think I'd ride there again! "World's biggest f'n bee hive you've ever seen" and "trail ride" just don't go well together!
Excellent story telling though. Yikes!
Cant wait to hear about the snakes now.
Maybe in the wintertime, when the little bastages are frozen!
..."World's biggest f'n bee hive you've ever seen" and "trail ride" just don't go well together!...
LOL!! Tell me about it! But to be fair, according to the owner of the camp, apparently that beehive had been there for quite a while and they'd had all kinds of groups go down and look at it, even with little kids, and nobody ever got stung. But by gosh, they definitely can't say that now! And I don't know what we did to provoke it. We were just talking in normal voices, no shouting, and we were taking pictures. Maybe it was the flashes going off, although I always turn mine off in dark places because they don't reach and make the exposure darker anyways, or maybe it was the horses feet making noise on the rocks, although they've supposedly had large groups in there before, or maybe they just didn't like the way we smelled that day, but whatever it was, they were SERIOUSLY PISSED.
And they weren't regular honeybees either. They were smaller and black. I wondered if they weren't Africanized bees, but I think if they were we'd all be dead. I mentioned them to a co-worker and he said "Oh yeah man, those little black honeybees are MEAN! My Grandaddy used to keep bees and he wouldn't even touch them they were so mean." So apparently they've been here for quite some time because this guy is in his 60's. So who knows what kind they are. But I seriously don't want to see them again!
Were any of the stings particularly serious? I know Bay got stung once and his lip swelled up and looked awful sore. Not sure what kind of bee stung him either, they’re all the same to me.
That’s right. We haven’t heard the whole story yet, there’s still snakes and a landslide to come!
We didn't think to take a picture of it until we were already past it, but then we thought "That's just too weird", so BladeRider went back and tried to take one, but Blade really didn't like the looks of that moving can so she didn't get a good one. It just looks like a picture of a can in some weeds.
I kinda felt sorry for the snake and figured he might die if he didn't get his head out of that can and I seriously thought about going back and pulling it off of him, but I really didn't know what kind of snake it was and I really just didn't want to get snakebit right then, so I left him to his own devices. I figured he got himself into that predicament, he could get himself out.
Yeah - I’d have felt bad too, but I don’t do snakes, and Bay doesn’t do moving beer cans, I wouldn’t think.
It’s a little like a video I saw with a skunk who had his head stuck in a jar of some kind. It was a pitiful situation, but no one wanted to get close enough to help it.
She's probably gonna kill me for posting it, because she had no make-up on and a serious case of helmet-head, and a super-extreme-close-up of anybody is never all that flattering, but hey, she put it in an album where I could get to it, so what can I say. You gotta show your war wounds sometimes...
I think she looks great even close up. It’s a battle wound, wear it proudly!
And the answer was...nothing but underbrush.
So when he came down, Kari made him take the camera back up there and take our picture...
Gary said we were like a bunch of Japanese tourists with our cameras, taking pictures of everything. LOL! And I guess that's true!
I got to thinking about it later and my thought would be that someone (you know there is one in every crowd) aggrivated them earlier in the day and they were "on alert" Probably some of those same people that leave empty beer cans on the trails.
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