A very Sunny Saturday

Yesterday was a real treat. A friend had called on midweek wondering if we'd want to join her and her husband on an overnight horse-camping outing down on the Missouri. T had drill this weekend, so it was just me, and after some slightly panicked thoughts (time constraints, exploding horses, etc.), I decided that I couldn't NOT go. Further discussion made it a day trip rather than an overnight, and I commenced the frantic scramble that precedes the first extended trail outing of the year.

Since it was only me going, I'd trailer down with C & J. The driveway loop at the farm was blocked Friday night, so I planned to just drop my saddle, bridle & unnecessary morning items at their place the night before, and walk Sunny down the drive, meeting them at the road to load. Of course, that meant I also needed to get the full saddlebags, miscellaneous stuff like my purse, fly spray, etc. down the drive as well. For scrambled as my evening and morning were, it actually turned out that there were only two minor glitches -- nobody brought a bucket (there was ample water available in tanks, etc., so not a problem, but still...), and the pad I've been using on Sunny turned out to be incompatible with the saddlebags I'd brought (solved by tying them on J's horse, as we only needed two, total).

We left Mitchell at about 8:30 with an 80 mile drive in front of us, and pulled in to Greenwood at about 10:30. The day was gorgeous - sun, light breeze, few bugs - and the footing was good. I'd been really worried, as we've had such bad rain this spring. All the flooding tends to turn the gullies to washes and it's really easy to sink a horse in some of the boggy spots. As it turned out, it was dry enough to cross where we wanted in all but a few places, the grass was belly deep and taller in spots (made for very happy ponies, as they could grab a mouthful without even bending their heads). The only real shock of the trip was exactly how low the Missouri is -- more sand than river, it's lower than I've ever seen it, which is scary after the amount of rain we've had.

We'd decided to take it easy: C's knee hasn't been good, and both of their mares have had some "slightly off" issues in the past couple of months, so although both seemed sound and good to go, we wanted to make sure not to overdo, and also not to get too far out if a problem did arise. The terrain we stuck to is mainly grassy rolling hills separated by tree-clogged, sometimes impassable gullies. If you wander, which is the fun way to go, it makes for lots of climbing and descending and a fair amount of backtracking to find a passable route. All in all, it's a workout for flatland horses, but we must have judged things correctly, as they were all still perky and walking out at the end of the day. Happy to stand by the trailer and rest, though! We took frequent breaks for water, stopped for 45 minutes in the shade for lunch, and around an hour later in the day before making one short final loop to see if we could catch a glimpse of the reservation's buffalo. It was not to be on this trip, although we did manage to collect a huge swarm of mosquitoes!

It was a great outing, and I'm so glad I decided to go. Sunny and I have a few bugs to work out, but more on that later. For as little real riding as I'd had a chance to get in this spring, he was a trooper.