Riding Backwards...

...well, not literally, this time! ;)

On Thursday, my mom and I switched some things up. She rode Mercy and I rode Starlett. I had a few things to remind Star of and I wanted to watch how Mercy interacted with people, other than myself, riding her. Additionally, we rode the creek trails 'backwards,' the opposite direction we usually ride them on.

This was a neat experience. By riding the same direction all of the time you can miss so many interesting details of the trail and surroundings itself. For example, I have ridden on this creek trail over a dozen times over the summer. This is what I missed each and every time we passed this old growth tree stump:

There are so many super cool fungi and mushrooms on this trail, being so close to the cold water. Every year we search the trail edges for wild edible mushrooms, but we are never lucky. Oh well, at least the inedible ones are pretty!

Mercy was wonderful for my mom. She listened to her even as she rode away from Star and I on one part of the trail. Star was the one that needed reminding on how to stand still until I say so. It didn't take much to correct her, just the pull of one rein to straighten her out.

We continued on our way and made it off the creek trail. We headed up the service rode and rode around in the woods for a while, then we headed back down.

Once past the creek, we loped up the road to the trail to take us home. The day ended much better, weather wise, than it had started:


(Yes, that is Mercy on the left hand side of the barn)

Then, on Sunday, we rode again. We headed out at half time of the Seattle Seahawks game (sad day). We got up the rocky hill and found our ourselves at the apple tree. A few of the smaller apples looked good so I side passed Mercy to the tree and picked a few. After enjoying their snack, we moved the woolly ones on to the tracks. No one was there, so we slow loped for quite a ways.

I wanted to ride in the woods and run up the 'steep curvy' hill, so we took a side trail off the track named by the bikers 'Plan B Trail.' This trail isn't the most horse friendly as the branches on many trees are way low. Even though it's challenging to maneuver, it is a lovely trail, something unlike the other trails in the area. Something unique.

After winding around in the clear cut, we entered the old growth forest. To get to this 'steep and curvy' hill, we had to ride through another trail that is not maintained very well. Since both my mom and I carry pruners, we slowly made our way through the trail, working on it was we went. Mercy knew we were at that hill when we started heading down into the gully. At the bottom she tried taking off, but I put a stop to that. I hadn't even put my pruners away yet! After TrailridinRN made it down with Star we blasted off up the hill. It twists and turns a few time before I ask her to slow down to a trot to make a more dangerous corner. On the other side of the corner is a cliff, which would take us down to the creek, if we were lucky. But after making the corner I let her go a little further.

Making our way home, we find a few more opportunities to lope a little. I'm glad we had such a good ride, cause coming home to the news about our beloved Seahawks drained me. Dang.

At least I didn't have to see their 'new' hideous green uniforms for the second half, lol!