Thursday, February 24, 2011

Riding

I have been riding! All 4 of my saddle horses...if you can believe that.

Since my riding area was still muddy and the canal roads were still muddy, I headed across the road to here...
The big parking lot...
Technically, the canyons are over the hill behind the parking lot. It's quite beautiful back in there, but I haven't ventured there with the horses yet. I took these pics early in the day, so there is very few people here yet. But this is a very busy place. Tons of bicyclists. I wanted to make sure the horses got a little more familiar with seeing people on bikes before encountering them in any numbers in the canyon. They have all seen that now and of course they all had to stare, but no freak-outs (Whew!).

For now, I am staying on the north side of the canyons and riding down the dirt road you can see a little bit of in this picture...
There's about 3 miles of road before coming to a fenceline. At this point, I turn around and head back. It's a good little workout for the horses. There are some nice long hills and a couple of shorter, steeper ones. However, there are miles and miles on the other side of the fence and even more canyons to ride in. I could spend all day riding just one horse out here. Just my little jaunt down that stretch of road takes a little over an hour from start to finish. That's plenty for the ponies at this point. I'm mostly walking the horses, but have been throwing in some long-trotting.

This is about the 1/2 way point, looking back toward the parking lot...
The desert is starting to dry out, but is mostly still pretty muddy and that mud is dee-ep! If we weren't expecting more rain this weekend, I would probably be able to do some off-road riding in the next couple of days. That would really give the ponies a workout.

I'm less than a mile from home...
I was hoping I could just ride over to the park, but the gate beside the auto-gate that goes into the park is wired shut, so I have to load up and haul in. It's no big deal really. Takes me about 5 minutes to drive there.

All of the horses know where home is...
Hey...no remarks about my muddy horse...LOL...I scraped off as much of the mud as I could. Spooks is a P.I.G! If there is mud...he is going to be covered in it.


12 comments:

ACountryCowgirl said...

Looks like a beautiful place and what a nice place to ride;) Glad you are getting some riding in. I sat on my horse yesterday..does that count:) But I will say it didn't feel like I was stradling a 2X4 so I was very excited with how she is coming along:) maybe a parade this year:)

Kristen said...

wow I'm jealous! I'd love to have a place like that to ride in, and so close to home! You're one lucky lady!

Cut-N-Jump said...

I used to be able to ride into Usery park. They had a great wash to gallop down and a huge area we could do 'arena work' only not in an arena. Nice to have options like that.

Hopefully the big WB mare will be under saddle next week. Time is not always on our side.

in2paints said...

Looks like a lovely place to ride. I bet it's nice to have so much space so close by. I've got a few places around here to ride but I've got to haul to them and it takes about 30 minutes.

Spooks is so cute!

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

For a minute there I spaced out and forgot that you moved. I thought, "That's South Dakota?" Oops. Looks like a great place to ride. Colorado is pretty close to Nevada in the layout of its land.

Anonymous said...

No comment on Spooks! Casey's range bred, so he's a stall pig. I call him "Mr. Pee Face" if I have to have him stalled for any reason at all. Yes, gross!

Crystal said...

haha I was just commenting the other day on how I love that Razz is such a clean horse.
Sure would be nice to ride there, sounds perfect so close to home.

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

It definitely is a nice place to have so close. It's odd though, there are very few horse-back riders that take advantage of it.

I'm looking forward to the desert drying out because there is another place that Megan and I rode in last year. It's about 5 miles north of home. Thousands of acres of riding.

cdncowgirl said...

Ok I'm a bit envious here... if I get my passport and some vacation time I could come help you work ponies

Fantastyk Voyager said...

Wow, what a nice playground and so close!

You could always say he's an Appy if you don't look too closely.

GunDiva said...

Oh, I want to come riding with you! I've not ridden on your side of the divide. Looks like a ton of fun.

Funder said...

Wow, so pretty out there! And... so much ground! All of mine is hidden under white stuff, yuck.

Isn't it awesome having such wide-open spaces so close to your house? :)