Bare footin' and grousing

February is here and with it usually a false spring. Saturday was such a day. The forecast was for 70+ degrees; although I don't think it reached that temp while we were riding, it was still a glorious day!

After a week of being able to think of nothing else, Lynn said we would start at 7am. We knew we needed to brush all the mud and pitch off Jupiter and Buster; load the saddles, head stalls, helmets, and the other necessary detritus into the 4-wheeler; connect the pickup; and then put everything all away again; and I needed to be home around noon-1:00. Gene had company and wanted to run around a bit, so I was on Mom duty.

At 6:30, she called and said, "Um, it's really dark out there." I laughed. Yep, so it is. I told her we didn't really need five hours. So at 8:00, I arrived. Boy they were dirty horses. But we got them loaded and off we went.

The original plan was to toodle around the ranch. The boys are barefoot and we figured it would easiest on their feet. But we as we headed that way, we began to see bits and pieces of car parts. Both of us started worrying about the state of the meadow. Sure enough, it was torn up. Bad. Off to the side of the road was the chassis of a vehicle. It had two wheels, with tires surprisingly, and was upside down. We decided not to go on down to the lower meadow. :(

We continued up the road with both boys looking for the softest ground to walk on. When we rounded the corner just below the little road that leads to the big mess of a campsite above the meadow (got that? :) LOL), we saw something. It was the body of the car off on that little road. I am not sure what exactly Buster did (he was ahead of us), but he snorted or something and you know Jupes--he snorted, shied, and we whirled away from it. I talked him through it and we were able to walk, albeit a little sideways, past it. Suddenly, Haley jumped up a grouse. Good grief! Flap, flap, flap, flap! You got it--another shy, this time much, much larger. :) But he recovered before anyone could tease him and walked on like it was nothing.

We rode up to our trail and found a new way to go. We all really like it--well let me change that--Jupes did not. It was a little narrow where there were trees with branches sticking out and he did not want to go through it. But after a solid, knees locked balk, I told him he had to and he gave in. On our way back down it later, we fixed some of the trail, but next time we will need to cut some of those branches. At least now I know what we will fail at if and when we ever do a trail trial--it will be those colorful nerf branches off the poles. He will not want to do that for sure. (Especially since he is so smart, he'll be like, "Seriously, can you not see that we can go around it?")

Haley and Ziva jumped up three more grouse, in three different places, but all they got was an ear. The two of them had a wonderful time. The two of us had a glorious time. And I think the boys enjoyed getting off the place, they just wished they had some shoes on. :)

I'm am already looking forward to next weekend.