Fun with Friends

Well I didn't ride a whole lot this summer with a bruised tailbone after Elk Rock and then the terrible heat we had this summer :(  I did get a ride in here and there at home on Satin and even the 4th of July parade in Milo.
Well I am going to just get to the most recent rides which were over Labor Day weekend. On Saturday afternoon I met some friends at Stephens Forest. They were camping that weekend and by the time I got there they had run home to feed real fast so Satin and I went solo on a couple of shorter trails while we were waiting for their return. 

It was overcast that day like it might rain but it didn't and kept nice and cool! 
When they got back, the 3 of us had a nice long ride and I managed to get us off on a deer trail that ended and we got lost but no for long we found the dried creek bed and followed it until we hit the level B dirt road. I was so impressed with Satin some of the stuff we went thru she did great! 
Map of our ride on Saturday Sept. 1st

On Sunday I stayed home and got some things done in the morning and then got Levi out and did some playing around on the barrel and pole pattern, some groundwork over brush and logs and I even made her stand on a upright log lol

Then we had our first solo ride down the road 

and for the most part she did good. About halfway thru our playing around I remembered to turn on the Endomondo so we only have this partial map of our ride lol, we did some cantering up the road and walking back, cantering up the road again and walking back so you will see on that map we went back and forth a few times ;) She got a pretty good workout. 

Then on Monday I picked up my friend Courtney and her mare Lu and we headed to Stephens Forest. I'm thinking Satin is a smidge taller than Lu ;)

We had a great day even tho it got pretty warm. We also found some new trails neither of us had been on before and they were pretty nice trails. 

We had a really great time but our horses were pretty tired and sweaty when we done but they really seemed to enjoy the ride and each other :) Our biggest peeve was all the beer, pop and food wrappers that were along the trails :( Map of our ride on Monday Sept. 3rd

Elk Rock May 18-20th

Wow that was a long hiatus huh? A lot has happened since I last blogged. I will start with Elk Rock and why I haven't written for awhile.
Some friends and I went camping with our families at Elk Rock May 18-20th. I had planned to take Jake, Satin, Levi and Jackie so Marty and the kids could ride with me. Well Miss Satin came up limping a couple days before hand, checked her out and she had an abcess in her foot :( .  Josie rode Jake, I rode Levi and Nate rode Jackie in the morning and Marty rode her in the evening. Levi did great her first day out on the trails. She was leading, following and riding in the middle. We went thru some crazy thick brush on one trail which caused Marty to lose his hat and I have to climb off to retrieve it. Well as I did Marty and Josie rode on!! Now I am thinking what is Levi going to do with them riding off and we are in this thick brush?!
Well to my surprise she did not flinch, holler or get upset and we easily caught them with her long legs lol.

On the 20th Marty and Nate went home to go fishing so Josie and I were going to ride with friends, we had kept it smaller family rides the day before since Levi was green and one of my friends had a green horse as well. Well since both girls did so well the day before we decided to ride together. We were doing great and again we did the lead, middle and follow as its good for horses to learn to ride in different areas of the crowd.
We decided to head back for a bite to eat at lunch and on our way back we saw a young buck just off the trail, like 2 horse lengths away or so! Well as we were riding past and were almost all of us were by the deer decided to leave, when he did, I guess he had some friends that were bedded down in the grass that we couldn't see and it cause a big spook and stampede. 4 of us in our group of 6 came off our horses and 3 of the horses got away. Yep the 2 green ones and Jackie :(  I stayed on the longest trying to pull my big mare up but she was just too big and too strong for me as I didn't have all my core strength back from my December surgery. I am sure if you have kids you will also understand when I say I was freaked out more by the fact that the horse my daughter was on ran past without my daughter on board than I was about my runaway horse. I knew I wasn't going to get this mare stopped and I sure as hell wasn't leaving my daughter back there not knowing if she was ok. So I bailed off my speeding bullet and, I would like to think I did a graceful tuck and roll, but considering the condition I was in afterward I am going to say it wasn't entirely graceful ;)
Well luckily when I "dismounted" I didn't break anything and my phone was right next to me on the ground. I started running back to check on the others, it felt like I was running forever when I met up with them heading my way. I was so happy to see everyone was basically ok, that was when they told me I was bleeding :(  I had a large goose egg and short laceration on my forehead.. as we all know head wounds bleed terribly.
I am going to just say here to shorten this up that one horse made it back to camp, the other 2 we found almost 3 hrs later bogged in the mud behind the park. I was very grateful that day for my friends, the people that helped us look for and find the horses and that none of us were too seriously injured.
I got checked out by the Dr and while no concussion I did have a badly bruised tailbone, bruised shoulder, bruised hip, bruised ribs and a knot on my head.
This kept me from blogging for awhile then my grandmother passed away and one of my uncles passed away and I just let the blog slide a bit. Hopefully I will get back into a routine of writing some as I am riding more now :)