the long ride

I've been meaning to tell you about the long ride for quite some time, but no day has been better than today. I've been compiling pictures for a while now, so the landscape and people will change, but the trail is still the same.

Also, like I mentioned before, my group of women last week were pretty good riders, so I felt comfortable to take pictures in some places that I normally have to pay close attention to them.

Did you just read that? "I felt comfortable to take pictures..." I think I've been hanging out with the Belarusian too long!

Anyhow, I had another wrangler with me who was in the lead, while I was their navigator. It was all good.

Ok, so. The Long Ride.

On Wednesdays, we give our riders (age 12 and up) the option to take the long ride. This entails at least 5 hours of riding, hence age 12 and up - younger kids tend to crumble with that intensity. It's 2.5 hours out and about 2.5 hours back, although the horses tend to walk a bit faster on the way home. The riders can choose to go farther, but we'll cover that another day.

The trail is also a tad more advanced. When I say advanced, I mean to tell you that it took a lot of my courage to trust my horse on the way down. As I mentioned before, I'm a little bit chicken. But now, this trail is old hat and doesn't bother me at all.

Let me show you what it looks like from atop the horse.

It's pretty steep at this part.

Some might even consider it, um, scary. It has caused more than one tear to fall!

But once you make it to the bottom, it's smooth sailing from there.

Unless, of course, you get slightly lost. Ahem. I mean, unless you go exploring.

And find sweet meadows like this one.

And you get to see my favorite tree on the trail.

Then you end at the Mount Margaret Trailhead where Cookie greets you with a smile and lunch.

People relax until it's time to make the decision. To go forward or to make the trek back.

Like I said before, for this post, we're going to head straight back.

And what you go down, you must go back up!

I have to tell you, this trail is almost enough to make even the best riders crumble.

But when you know that you've conquered this mountain and you see views like this, you know it was worth it!

I mentioned at the beginning that today was the perfect day to talk about the long ride....I'll tell you about that tomorrow (hopefully).