Headed to Slide Mountain

After a lovely diving vacation last month, it's pony time! We are headed up to Slide Mountain Ranch with Calabar and Lena to spend some time trail riding, swimming, hiking and whatever other trouble we can get into up in the Sierra foothills.

Wreck diving in Cozumel--another great if expensive hobby!

Ike and Cheri no longer have the guest business, so we are staying in a house in Twain Harte near the lake and leaving the horses at the ranch. This means they will not hear the toilet flush at 4 a.m. and assume I'm coming out to feed them. Or maybe they will but I won't be there to hear them start whinnying for breakfast. I am trying not to be concerned about not being right there and am mostly succeeding. It would have been better if we'd had more practice being away from the barn of late, but with life being life, that hasn't happened.

It's been way too long since we had them out, even just to trail ride. That's nearly entirely due to my work schedule--I was working Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday off, leaving us with only Saturday to do family stuff. I went back to Monday through Friday after we got back from Cozumel, so a normal weekend schedule should allow for more trail riding. However, with this, that and several other things, we still didn't get them out before we head up to Slide on Thursday.

I'm sure it will be fine and they will settle down nicely. Certainly they will after a few hundred laps around the arena and up and down the mountain behind the ranch.

Really, though, it's just a chance to get away and see people we really like and play with the horses away from the arena.

Maybe this time I can even get Calabar to work the mechanical cow!

"Right," he says, "Only real cows, not bags of socks."

"Why am I chasing a bag of socks?"

"Duh! Because it's fun, Calabar!!" says Lena.

Updates on Ike and Cheri, the new foal and Calabar's progress with cow chasing--plus plenty of pictures of Lena actually working the mechanical cow because she thinks it's fun--coming soon.