Finally, a trail ride from Washington! I don't know if it was particularly dark in the shade of the woods yesterday or if I'm out of practice, but a lot of pictures didn't come out very good... dark and blurry. Well, we enjoyed it in the dark and blurry places, because it was a little hotter out yesterday than we like it.
But here's some that came out.
We rode out to the falls rest stop, and got off and took a break. It was a hard ride out for us, and it shouldn't have been, it's only a few miles. But being out of shape and hot, we were ready for a rest. :~)
Bay licking the salt off Cyn...
Cyn taking our water bottle. ;~)
The bridge on the way back...
Pretty big tree...
Cyn leading for awhile when we had to turn around and backtrack to find a wide enough place to let some other riders pass.... I'm glad we did that, the lead horse in the group we met was giving Bay an awful mean stink eye when we let them by us, I would not have wanted to meet her in closer quarters. I was half expecting him to fire a hoof at us as it was. And the lady was oblivious...
And that's it! The trip back was great... Bay was really on his game on the way back, as usual, with Cyn trotting to keep up. Never let anyone tell you old friends don't lie. ;~) They do. Well, Bay, we'll take you out a little more regular now, and we'll get all of us back in shape.
Here's a video of him walkin' out on the way home.
Trail Ride with Bay
Oh - and when we got back, we had to boys approach us who we'd actually seen with their family walking out on the trail. I'd guess their ages at 4 and 8. They were dressed in some kind of traditional clothes, but they weren't Amish or Mennonites, it was different. Perhaps an Orthodox Jewish sect... Grey or blue smocks that looked like cotton linen and went down to nearly their knees. Their dad was dressed the same way.
They wanted a ride on the horses and asked if we would let them or want them to pay. How could we turn that down, they were nice kids, just wanted to ride a horse. They were sitting there holding bike helmets. I asked if it was OK with their parents and they said yes, but I had to just believe them, their parents were no where to be seen. They said they were camping just up the hill. So we put them up, the older one on Bay and the younger one on Cyn, and we led them up the hill to their camp. It's a pretty steep hill, Becky might remember it, right out of the trail head at Mima. I figured, if it wasn't OK for them to be riding, we'd soon find out when we walked into camp ;~)
But their dad was gracious and thanked us for letting them ride, they had a very little girl too, maybe two, and small talked a little while and walked back.
They followed us down a few minutes later and wanted to give us some little prayer cards they'd made that said 'God Bless You! and I think has Hebrew writing on it.
So that was nice. They were excited to get to do that. They'd been turned down by other riders.
How nice to let the young ones ride and I am glad you guys had a good ride. I see a deep spot in the first picture, on the right of Bay. Other then that, the trails look really nice and dry.
I was really beat too. For some reason, I couldnt sleep very well this weekend. Beautiful full moon though! I was up a couple of times during the night on Saturday. The people next to us has three beautiful Spotted Saddle Horses. The one big gelding was laying flat out and we thought he was dead! He laid like that for a long time and I kept checking on him. The next morning, I told the owner and he said the horse always lays like that.
I'm home now and finally got to see the pics. Very nice! I always love seeing those big ferns. I watched Bay's video too. He's got a nice trail walk. Not quite a running-walk but nice and animated. I'll bet he covers a lot of ground that way.
And in other news, I decided to go on to the doctor after I got to work because the ankle just really started to swell. So I went to the Bone and Joint clinic to see if they could work me in, but they were booked and said that if I really need to see somebody before my appointment tomorrow that I should just go to the ER. I didn't know if I really did or not, but I'd already taken off work so I just went on and went. They x-rayed it and from the looks of it, the lower left head of my fibula is broken clean through, kind of at an angle. So so much for my theory that if you can bear weight on it that it's not broken. :-/ Anyways, they put a temporary cast on it, kind of like the one they put on my thumb, and told me to stay off of it until I see the bone doctor tomorrow. So I headed home, but I did go by the barn and feed first though. It was nearly 100* ambient temperature with a heat index of 110 and the horses have no shade until late afternoon so I thought I'd go ahead and feed them and leave the barn open so they could stand in the isle-way and have some shade. But I'm home now and I guess I'll stay here until my appointment tomorrow afternoon at 3. I'm going to see if I can talk him into just putting a boot on it instead of a hard cast. That way I can at least take it off when I shower and not have to wrap it up like nuclear waste to keep it from getting wet. Just D@MN!