Trail Journal: May Long 2013

I am alive! After a pretty crazy week getting ready, then heading to may long, then jumping back into a ton of work, I finally have a moment back to my blog. May Long was AMAZING, I can't get over what a great weekend it was. The forecast was for pouring rain everyday and we only got a smidge of rain one morning while we were sleeping - it was wonderful weather, and even better riding.

We headed out Friday at about 4 pm, we had to go pick-up Quiz at Caron's uncle's place, so it was a bit of a journey to get all the horses together, and make it to the ranch. We had good time though and ended up unloading the horses around 6:30 pm.

For the first night we put Mac and Jingle together, and Quiz in another pen. The boys were wonderful together, here are two proud mamas.

Here are two proud mamas again... the one in the full camo (ahem.. me) may have indulged in one too many that particular night. What the heck - i'm camping!

That night was by-far the coldest night, and it didn't help I jumped into an unzipped sleeping bag with little disregard for warmth when I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle night quite hypothermic, luckily by the morning it was hot-hot-hot, and we ended up the Little Red Deer River on one of my favourite rides.

Here is the gang at the first river crossing up the red, the obligatory "shot through the ears" photo provided by my handsome man. Who, by the way, I found a saddle for and then gave a week off. Mister was a bit of a dancy-spookey-pants, apparently he doesn't remember he was born and raised on a ranch. A log turned him into a cutting horse, that's how quickly he jumped away from it, oh how easily we forgot where we came from...

Although we lucked out on weather, there was still some spots of snow hiding in the hills...

Jingle even encountered quaders for the first time.

Not to be bested by the boys, the girls headed up the same hill they had just come down.

Beat that boys and machines.

The river crossings were easy-peasy all weekend. In other springs, I've nearly swam through some crossings, this was our deepest one and my jeans only got a little wet. 

We arrived at our destination - Forever Winter - named so for the spring that consistently has snow on it year-round. However,  I have never actually witnessed snow on the spring, so wasn't it lucky that this year, the area held up to it's name!

From there we headed to the "Far Lookout" and checked out the beautiful view.

Snow still on the mountains!

The next day we bundled up to a bit of a more overcast day and headed out...

As you can see here, I had to wrap Jingle's sidepull in vet wrap, the chicago screws on his sidepull were rubbing him a bit raw on one spot on his cheek, poor boy.

A lot of new logging has happened since last summer, which is always kind of surreal. This area was a huge forest that we used to have to wind up and through. Now there's a big road in it's place, and no more trees.

We got to our destination - Maimi's Lake - named from an old ghost story, but this year it was more of a slew, we even got to walk out right to the middle. Something I haven't done in a couple years.

Of course we had to take some girly group-shots, my camera was propped up by a log... 

All the deadfall at the mouth of the "lake" and me!

This is towards the end of our ride... I'm not saying that we probably had one to many stops to "warm up" with fireball, but.... well, maybe we did.. look at those big smiles!

Mac was acting a bit silly with the owner's horses in a pen beside our crew, he was trying to get at one of their mares, and in the winnying and running ended up spooking Quiz and Jingle. Jingle took it upon himself to protect Quiz and began to herd her away. It was getting a bit mixed up, so we moved Mac in a pen beside our crew but away from the other horses. Quiz and Jingle were quite content to be together, they are undeniably in love, infact this photo shows Jingle letting Quiz eat his grain while he happily munches hay. We also caught them taking turns eating out of the same small bucket earlier... 

After supper we went on a hike to a spot called "The Waterfall" that Laura and I literally stumbled upon one year as counsellors. It's a pretty cool spot - an old dried up waterfall in the middle of the forest with rock ledges and old trees across it.

Here we are infront of an old hunters cabin, affectionately known as Slashfoot's cabin.

From there, we decided it would be an intelligent idea to scale a rock wall to get home, instead of getting our feet wet in the river..

Brigitte and Caron survived it!

The Next day we did a shorter, but still really nice ride to a spring named - Sur Coulee - all in all we had an absolutely wonderful long weekend, one we're sure to talk about for years to come.

Meg, our mascot and the local farm dog.

My truck had died the second we got to the ranch on Friday so the boys tinkered with it and ultimately it had to be towed into the nearest town (... by a dually and a tow rope and me behind the wheel... terrifying). $1000 later and a new fuel pump it's fixed, but i'm still licking my pocket books wounds... sigh. Not the best end to the trip, but nevertheless, we sure did have a good time. (Perhaps, a couple times, too good of a good time)