Turkey Trot

Last Saturday we decided to ride even though it was the second week of hunting season. We left the dogs home with Lee and headed out. We parked and started going through our usual readiness routine: load up granola bars, water, and cameras. Put on helmets and chinks (it had rained) and spurs. It was at this juncture that I realized I was hearing something out of the ordinary. I finally listened to try to identify the sound. I stood up and saw the horses, Jupiter and Star, were staring intently toward the noise as well. I took a step backward to look down the road. The sound stopped and suddenly I was looking into 18 pairs of turkey eyes!!

The turkeys were standing in the middle of the road in a large cluster between the parking spot and the trailer house just below it (less than 20 yards away?). The sound I had been hearing was them walking up the road and talking to each other. When I moved, they realized we were there and they stopped. I got Lynn and Shirley's attention, but before Lynn could get her camera, they began to move again--this time southward across the road and into the woods right there. It was really cool.

We rode up Hennessey to the top and met not one, but two trucks road hunting. We told them a general direction we were heading (left road, up over the ridge to the pond). We just did a short loop to get the kinks out and have a little wind in our helmets.

Buying our chinks was such a good, good thing. It was nice to not be soaking wet from the thigh down. Every now and then, I would hear Lynn laugh as she got a wet branch across the face and Shirley and I told her to keep doing her job making it less wet for us. All of us had wet boots and the bottoms of our jeans were wet, but no one was cold. The top of the mountain was fogged in and it was a glorious way to begin the weekend after a long, hard week.