Hobbit's Wild Ride

Wowza! It's been three weeks since we've ridden. Lynn has had lots of unfortunate and blessed events that kept her from having "wind in her helmet." But today we were ON. We rode Hennessey backwards. No not backwards on our horses, the trails, silly. First thing we noticed is that a lot of our regular trails have new down fall and many hanging branches that used to be up and out of our way. I don't how Shirley stays so clean and unscathed, but Lynn and I had branches across the face, cedar down our shirts, and Lynn's shirt got hung up on a branch and ripped two holes in it! At the regular granola stop she had to shake the tree detritus out of her helmet.

Jupiter led most of the first part of the loop and he was on high alert today. The first scary thing was my helmet got scraped by some branches and he coiled up and sprung out away from the sound. Next I scraped my boot on a tree--again, he coiled up and sprung away. Then there was a big, gray bush. I think it's been there all along, but remember, we were going the opposite direction. He whipped around and told Star, "You go first old man." He was willing to go up and sniff it once Star walked by it.

It was an overall great ride. Although Lynn said more than once, "Geez, this is Hobbit's Wild Ride!" It took me probably an hour to realize why it sounded it familiar: there's a children's book called The Wind in Willow and it has a chapter called "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride." (And there's a Disneyland ride by the same name! That's probably how crazy our ride was today.) We even had a jack rabbit! It stopped and looked at us then took off again. Thankfully, Haley did not catch it and all the dogs came running back without incident!

Looking forward to tomorrow. . .

 Ready and willing!

The end of a great ride: no bees, happy dogs, wet blankets.