At the beginning of August Brad and I took the kids on their
first organized trail ride.
Growing up
my family went on a lot of organized trail rides.
They usually included nice people, a 4 hour
trail ride on beautiful property, camping, and fun.
The difference for the kids would be riding
around with a lot of other people on someone else's schedule and there are
pop/beer/snack stops on the trails.
The
first part they didn’t love, but the stops were a big hit!
We got to the ride about an hour before they were scheduled
to leave. Once we got settled and up by
the gate to leave we were greeted by a great guy who offered Brad a special
seat that goes on the saddle horn so Joel could ride double with Brad more
comfortably. Brad and Joel were on
Croc. Cecilia and I were on Hank and we
took turns ponying Vincent on Alasan.
The ride went really well and all our horses handled the large group of
horses and the cattle in the pastures we were riding through very well. At one point Alasan didn’t want to cross a
creek and a nice lady was kind enough to help lead him down the little hill and
across the water. Actually a few times
she volunteered to pony Alasan to make it easier for Brad and I. We had never met her before, she was just
another very nice person we met that day!
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| Grandma Diane and Joel |
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| Cecilia, Brad, and Alasan |
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| Brad and Vincent |
The ride was fun, the property we rode on was mostly cattle
pastures that were so beautiful, but it was really long.
I am not exaggerating when I say it was about
6.5 hours long.
The longest trail ride
the kids had ever been on previously was 3 hours long.
After the 3
rd pop/beer/snack stop
Joel and Vincent switched and Joel got to ride Alasan and Vincent rode with
Brad.
When we were about 45 minutes from
camp Joel decided he was done and it took a lot of reminding to keep Joel
sitting on his saddle.
At one point he
was ready to jump off, he was kneeling sideways on his saddle.
Luckily we were able to convince him to sit
back down!
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| Grandpa and Derek |
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| A beautiful view! |
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| Brad eating a snack! |
After the ride there was a pork chop supper and a band! The kids also enjoyed the park that was
there. We didn’t make it very long,
everyone was exhausted from the trip to the zoo the day before and the long day
of riding. We were going to go on the
Sunday ride too until we learned it was an all day ride. If the regular ride was 6.5 hours long I
couldn’t fathom how long the all day ride would be. So Sunday morning we left and headed to Matthiessen, where Brad’s parents met us to go riding.
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| Vincent being a goof |
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| Mommy and Cecilia |
Riding at Matthiessen was fun and we quickly made it to the
river and back, usually it takes forever!
It was a good thing it was short too because the kids were really tired
of riding after their long ride the day before.
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| Brad, Vincent, and Diane |
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| Brad, Diane, and Joel, and Hank's ears |
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| Vincent and Mommy |
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