I wrote this entire post already . . . complete with pictures . . . and even though I "saved" it . . . it disappeared on me. So, as you might imagine, I'm reluctant to write it again. But here goes.
The first ride, quite a while ago now, was an eight hour ride! That was its claim to fame! I didn't know if I could do it, but I did! In my youth, I used to do eight hour rides all the time on my first horse. But it's a long way from my youth! Three of us went on this ride: Joanne, who led the ride, and me and Carol. We drove a long way on a dirt road, parked, unloaded the horses, mounted up, and rode and rode and rode! We made it to the Verde River, had lunch, and then rode back. It was a pretty ride, but about the only thing we saw, apart from our beautiful surroundings, were a few cattle.
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| Joanne's horse drinking from the Verde River. |
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| Joanne, Carol, and me in the back. |
Joanne also led the next ride. This one was with one of the cowgirl groups that I'm in, so there were about twenty people on the ride. Before someone leads a ride for a large group, they usually do what's called a "pre-ride" . . . that's where they scout out the territory, and make sure that the trail is feasible and all, get the horse accustomed to the trail, and leave tracks to follow later. So after Joanne did the pre-ride, it happened to rain, which wiped out most of her tracks. We started following the trail, but soon lost it, and we were going under low hanging trees (watch out!) and branches were whacking us, and all sorts of things to avoid. I decided that day that I needed to get a pair of chaps . . . they go over your pants to protect you from branches and stuff. At one point on the ride, there was a kind of swampy area in front of us. I was riding Taffy again, and she didn't want to go. So, my friend Susie was behind me, riding Angel, and Susie got Angel to go. Angel fell down in the water! I thought it was quick sand sucking them both away, and that I'd never see them again! But Angel managed to get out of it, and they rode to the other side. I wasn't sure if I wanted to encourage Taffy to go in there or not! But Taffy had seen what happened, too, and she wasn't having any part of it! She jumped over a bush on the side of the swamp and made it to the other side without incident. Anyway, it was an exciting ride, and I really enjoyed it!
On another ride, we drove over to Skull Valley, and went with another horse group on a long ride up to a small lake. On the way, we passed an area that had been burned a year or two ago. Some of the beaver tail cactus (I think they're called that) were singed and bent over on their sides and looked like so many slain soldiers. It was sad. Then we had to go up this huge step-up on rocks. If I had been on Little Pearl, I don't think she could have done it! But I was on Taffy, and except for stopping midway through the step to catch a bite to eat, she did fine! We had lunch at the lake and then returned.
This next one had a lot of anticipation from most of the participants. Joanne was going to lead us on another ride . . . this time through a two hundred foot tunnel! It was an old railroad tunnel that they had to retire, because the trains kept falling off the mountain! It was about an hour drive up there. I can't remember exactly, but there were maybe twelve or fifteen people on this ride. We started out and rode along the old and original Route 66! Passing that, we soon came to the area where all the train tracks had been removed. We rode along a flat trail about eight feet wide. To the right of us was a gradual slope down a big hill that sometimes had large metal pieces holding the hill up, or something—they were about ten feet off the trail, so I'm not sure what they were there for. At one spot in the trail, some of the trail had crumbled away, so there was a warning sign. One of the horses freaked out at the sign, so the rider had to dismount and lead the horse past it. Little Pearl did fine. Shortly after that, the tunnel came into view, and the excitement of the group mounted! Here we go! The horse that Joanne rode had never been in the tunnel before and was not eager to get in this time, but it finally went in. The next horses followed. Little Pearl strode in easily enough, but there were some piles of rock inside the tunnel that she wasn't very happy about. I had brought a flashlight just in case, but even with a bend in the middle of the tunnel, there was enough light to see. We got to the other side, rode aways, and then stopped for lunch.
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| The old Route 66 |
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| Heading into the tunnel |
I tied Pearl to an old telegraph pole (or something!), and she kept trying to eat it! I had to keep getting up from my lunch to yell at her to stop. After lunch, we all mounted up again and rode back through the tunnel, which wasn't as exciting—or scary—as the first time. But Pearl still wasn't too sure about all those piles of rocks! After the tunnel, we rode back a different way. Instead of following the narrow path back, we rode downhill to the bottom. It wasn't really a trail, so we had to avoid bushes and branches, but I liked it better. And some of the places were really rocky, but we passed those quickly. There were some places with items from the wreckage of the trains, but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of those. Everybody was moving on, and I had to keep up with traffic—horsey style traffic, that is. We were almost back to the trailers . . . within maybe fifteen or thirty minutes . . . when we had an incident. Me and Pearl, that is. We came across a small herd of sheep guarded by two of those big sheepdogs . . . not Great Pyranees, these are tall smooth-coated white dogs. I think maybe they are Anatolian Shepherds, but I'm not sure. Anyway, Pearl, who is used to seeing deer, antelope, and jack rabbits the size of small dogs, has never seen a sheep before, and she wasn't at all happy about seeing them. She was excited in a bad way, but not horrible . . . but then, we came to a small water source, and several of the horses wanted to drink. Pearl and I, and some of the other horses, stood on top without going down to the water. I could feel her muscles bunching underneath me . . . which is never a good sign—the horse is about to explode—and I really wanted the other horses and the lead rider to come up from the water and let us move on. When we finally got going, we walked about fifteen feet from the water. There was a rather deep hole, but graduated down, so it wasn't awful, but I didn't really want to go into it, either . . . when I tried to ride in between it and the water, Pearl kind of flipped out and almost backed into the hole. She was really acting up, but I finally got her past it, and her antics made another horse act up, which I felt bad about. Anyway, aside from that, Pearl did really well. She didn't freak out too much over the strange horses (which she's still not completely used to), so overall, I was pretty happy. And I didn't get dumped over the sheep/hole incident, so I was happy about that, too! All in all, it was a great ride.
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| Heading out of the tunnel |
