Heavenly

It was supposed to rain all day yesterday. Instead the sun shone and I had no problem picking up a ton of hay across town. Hargobind came along for company and Gurunam and Shabd met us to help stack. In time, I will be able to take one of them out riding with me. Vinnie needs a bit more under saddle time first. The rest of Saturday’s photos are here.

My helpers left and I went for a ride! Lily is so game to get out that it makes riding 100% more fun. I ran into Lisa and Laura, so we swapped my camera for photos. I’m really having fun with this new point & shoot. That it takes video is an extra bonus.

Lily is out of shape, so we didn’t go to the top of Mt. Pisgah. I did dismount and lead her part way up the gravel walking trail, so we passed lots of hikers and dogs. I think that we were out for nearly three hours. We did quite a lot of wandering around. It’s quite fun to let Lily see where she wants to go. It’s usually farther away from home, instead of back to the barn.

Sunday, I zipped out of the house when the sun showed it’s face. This time, I took Vinnie out too. He had no issue being ponied down the road with cars passing, including trotting across the bridge. I didn’t want to tackle the single track trail right away, so we rode down below in the gravel road and in the meadow. The road is .6 miles and I wanted to see what pace we could keep at a big trot. We did it in 3 minutes. By my calculation, that is about 12 mph. Not bad, considering Lily broke to a canter a few times. That slowed us down, as it was not as fast as her trot. I also had to contend with Vinnie mostly cantering alongside.

In the meadow, we had a nice gallop. That’s a rush while ponying another horse! Both of them seemed to enjoy it, though I did see some competitiveness showing up. Not the best thing to occur when one horse really needs to stay behind the other. We ended with some controlled slow canter. All the while, rain drops were starting to spatter down.

Thankfully, they let up as we headed up the hill. The small window of blue that I saw from the meadow opened up to this dramatic sky. Many of the trails there are small streams this time of year. Under the water in most places, it is solid and sound though. Vinnie did well following behind on the single track and through the woods, twists and turns. At the first meadow, I took a break and let them graze. They enjoyed the view at times along with me.

This all was well worth missing laundry and dishes for. I’ll just stay up a bit later tonight and get that done too. Trail euphoria will carry me though…

Today’s photos are here.