4th of July

Happy 4th of July and thank you for following along on my blog!

We don't have any guests coming in this next week until Wednesday, so Ellen offered us the days off. I, of course, took them!

Then, on Wednesday, I'm heading back to Jacksonville for Jessica's wedding! Yippeee!

As such, I may be very busy and not have internet access (in the next couple of days), so I'm warning you now that I may not be blogging for a week or so. Hopefully, I'll be able to get you all caught up when I get back.

Check every couple of days if you're an optimist. Otherwise, I'll see you next week!

the long ride fiasco

Yesterday I showed you the long ride. Now let me tell you about the most recent long ride. Whew! Are you ready for this? There aren't many pictures for this part, so if you need some, just go back to yesterday's post.

Let me give you a little background info here. The long ride is an option. You do NOT have to take it. We had only 4 people who wanted to do it.

When I create groups, I try to keep families together, but Wednesday is a day they often split. In yesterday's case, I had a mother/daughter and a father/daughter who were going on the long ride. I took the rest of the family - mother/daughter/son - and put them with a mother/daughter who were leaving today.

When a family leaves on Wednesday, they do a short ride in the morning, are back by noon, and can get on the road soon thereafter. The daughter is 8 years old.

Of the mother/daughter/son trio, the son is 11 and the mother has arthritis in her hips and shoulders. By the way, when riding horses, you use your hips as your back's shock absorbers and your shoulders are used when you need to muscle your horse around.

Ok, so you've got the picture of this short group? An arthritic mom, 2 young children, and 2 people who need to be back by noon.

Well, you see, I did a poor job of communicating and their wrangler did a poor job of using common sense.

He took them on the long ride! Yes, you read correctly, he took this group on the long ride!

Let me remind you.

2.5 hours out.

And extremely steep.

Apparently there were screams, tears, and a near unscheduled dismount.

But alas, everyone made it safely to the trailhead, from which they called back to the ranch.

There was NO WAY IN HECK those riders were going to ride back.

Around 1:30 (note: that's an hour and a half after noon!), I drove the suburban up to the trailhead and picked up the unlucky 5. We had two extra staff who could ride back a couple of horses, but that left 3 horses without riders.

Dan told them just to secure everything and let them follow home. Not even ponied to the saddle horn. Everything was all well and good until the 3 decided to take the old trail, which is now fenced off.

So the boys came back with the horses they were on, but without the 3 stragglers.

Dan in all his cool, calmness, said wait 30 minutes. And don't you know! Those 3 came walking up with the last of the long riders.

Dan knew they wouldn't miss supper!

And for all of our mistakes, Dan took pity on us. Can you believe that? Most bosses would be scolding us to high heaven and Dan, well, Dan had us eat waaaaaaay out back where we could complain about our day and even brought us two six-packs of beer for our troubles!

If you ask me, you just can't ask for a much nicer place to work than that!

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).