Exhausting Day! But good :)

 

Whew, this was a busy day and I'm beat...

I started out going to the gym at 9am and it was a killer workout!  Then I lifted weights for about 45 minutes, race off to the lab, showered, and worked for four hours.

It was still raining when I got home at 3pm but you could tell it was blowing on through and the blue sky was peeking through.

I waited until what looked like the last shower, then ran down to the pasture and grabbed Cartman.
He was, of course, a bit muddy on the parts not covered by his sheet- so I had to spend about 1/2 hour getting him cleaned up. 

Buddy layed down in the middle of a giant puddle, about 1/2 way through our ride.

I hooked up the trailer,  and even got it on the first try!  I have to admit, I love towing with the gooseneck but I hate hooking it up.

Walking in the deep sand

It was about 5:30 by the time I got to the parking lot at Cooks Ferry.  Buddy was along for the ride and he was just crazy excited to go out with the horse.  We headed out and did a big walk loop in the sand for about a mile then picked up a jog and headed down the trail.

we found a small wooded area.

Cowlitz river

I wanted to ride for as long as I could, not fast or too hard as he had almost a week off due to my schedule and the shoeing appointment that trumped our Thursday night ride.

Exploring the fishing shacks along the river

We did some exploring and ended up with an extra few miles by the time we made the turn to come back.  I did let Cartman walk a bunch in the deep sand.  I think he gets a pretty good work out even at the walk in the deep stuff.

We stopped to watch the train go by, across the river.

It was a beautiful evening.

I think we wore the dog out tonight!

We ended up with eight miles and I was pretty pleased with that!

Tomorrow I have to get the trailer packed up and ready to go to Prineville for a two day clinic with Celena Pentrack on Wed-Thur.  I'm really excited!! Keeping fingers crossed for good weather for this event :)

Fly By

I had a whole post typed out about our quick ride tonite.  Unfortunately I hit some stupid button on the laptop and just deleted 10 paragraphs at one time. 

So, I'm tired- here's the condensed version:

I've been tired since running the 5K Friday nite.

I was lazy all weekend and even missed my Monday morning work out.

I started a sugar detox on Monday- I wouldn't suggest doing this on the first work day after Daylight Savings Time.....

It has been awesome dry weather and I was able to lunge Cartman out in the paddock last night.

He got completely sweaty and looked Curly after 20 minutes on the lunge.

Today I made it to the gym by 5:30am and even got my extra weight training done after class.

Today I found out it is going to start raining again.

Since it is going to start raining again I had to get a quick ride in tonite.

turning grey again

Someone is REALLY excited!!!

Extra wide/Extra Tall and he still just fits

heading out

Cartman, Buddy, and I made it to the trail at 6:22pm

We did a lot of trot and lope but walked the long gravel road section as he does not have his pads on yet and they have added new gravel to part of it.

We made it 5.10 miles so I walked another 1 tenth of a mile to try and bump my Distance Derby Mile to Date up to an even number.

Despite the time change I still had to get out the headlamp to clean the paddock.

Perfect Sunday :)

It was a glorious day for riding!!!

Michelle and I headed out to what we hoped might be a new close-to-home conditioning trail just outside of Castle Rock. 

When we arrived at the parking spot we were greeted by two large Labradors behind a lovely black wrought iron fence just across the road from our parking spot.  The dogs literally barked their head off for about 10 minutes, but were wagging at the same time.

Cartman came out of the trailer in a huge snit (I suspect because of the barking) and I worried that I might be in for a wild ride.

We hand walked the horses down the road to go around the locked gate and found a place to get on just inside.  We were far enough away from the dogs that C had returned to his normal cool, calm, and collected demeanor. Whew.

We rode for 3 hours!!!! It was heavenly.  It was logging road, but a lot was old enough that you could safely jog or lope it.  Since we'd never been here before Michelle had tried to map out a loop for us using Google maps. 

Unfortunately the one section we needed to ride on the power lines to loop around to another logging road was far steeper than it appeared on the computer.  Nonetheless, we off roaded it through some overgrown logging trails and managed to get 10 miles in without backtracking too much.

There is one section that is an awesome hill climb.  It goes on, and on, and on.  Cinnamon was on her first real adventure with us out in the woods so we let them jog the hill when they thought they just couldn't climb up slowly anymore.

We took it pretty slow today but Cartman got a great work out in.  On the way back to the trailers both horses stopped and drank from puddles! 

We ran into a pair of ladies on Walking horses just as we were getting back to the trailers and they said they ride up there quite a bit and have several loops. 

This looks like a promising spot to ride this spring.

On the way home we stopped for coffee :) It doesn't get any better than a good ride and a good Americano!

When we got home I fussed with the computer trying to get these pictures to download for an hour.  I finally gave up and went and took a nap.

Then I went out, groomed up Cartman and practiced the massage I learned at the clinic last weekend.  He really seems to like this stuff (can't say I blame him!)  and he will stop eating to stand there and let me rub him, especially the neck and rump areas.  Happy horse :)