Rattlesnakes, Squirrels, and Vultures; Oh My!

Saturday was a new adventure for us. Lynn and I loaded up the sleepy and somewhat nervous boys to head for Redding in the dark morning hours. She had moved them from the pasture with everyone else to a closer one with just the two of them. They spent the night by the gate nearest the older boys, who were a whole pasture away. Ziggy about jumped out of his skin when Lynn called his name. He thought for sure a monster had come for him. Once he recognized her voice and the sleep cleared from his head, he came right to her.

We met Alisa and our new friend, Suzy for breakfast. The world truly is small and soon we realized that we had friends in common who had been trying to get us all together and we did it accidentally! Too funny. Suzy took us to the Clear Creek/Swasey Trail loops. We began by following her and her pretty boy Forest on the trail that leads to the bathroom at the trailhead to start with and Jupiter finally peed with the saddle on! I was happy. The man in the parking lot probably wasn't as the yellow river ran downhill toward him and smelled strongly. He probably thought I was nuts because I was so excited over this event. (:

From there we set out to make some nice loops with gorgeous overlooks. Odie really wanted to lead and Alisa had to work to make him settle down, but Ziggy set a good, long-legged pace that made Jupiter trot every now and then to stay up. It was a gorgeous day and not too hot. I heard two rattlesnakes; one that rattled and one that whizzed! I am just as glad that I did not see them, nor did Jupiter, I think. All of the horses did fine if they did see them! We also had a tiny squirrel run out of a hole at Odie, run alongside Jupiter, through Forest's legs and then stop under Ziggy. Fortunately, Ziggy did not step on him and squish him.

Jupiter does not care for the gray piles of dead limbs and bushes. He is concerned about gray rocks sometimes. He has not shied, but really keeps his eye on them. He is pretty sure that they could be monsters. Well, as we were heading down the trail to end our day, sure enough a monster did come to life! Vultures were startled by our passing and rose up out of some brush to our left. Jupiter did not bolt or whip around, but he stopped on a dime! There were probably four or five vultures flapping up and off whatever was in there. I can't blame Jupe, it startled me too. Now he'll never believe me when I say, "Silly boy, they're only sticks," again. He might start talking like Star and tell me, "Oh yeah? Remember that one time?"

One of the highlights of the day was in between trails we rode down to Clear Creek. It was a nice spot to let the horses get into the water and drink. I think all the horses thought we could have spent more time playing in the water, as they seemed to like it.

After riding on the opposite side of the road for an hour or so, we decided to call it a day. But what a day! It was fun and we look forward to doing many more rides with Suzy.