Friday's Ride... Part One

So here I am, out of school, and I am still not behaving like a good blogger yet...lol!!!! We have all been really busy and to top things off, the weather around here has been in the seventies for over a week-not normal for around here at all. That being said, the entire population of Western WA has been outside, soaking up as much sunshine as possible, and not in their houses blogging.

And speaking of soaking up sunshine, what better way to do it than on horseback??? I must share mine and Amber's latest riding adventure with you, and those of you who know us...no snickering!!!!! Last Friday, we decided to trailer up to a recreational area that borders Mount Rainier National Park, and check out the trails. This specific place (known as Buck Creek to locals) is about 40 minutes away, and on a unmarked forest service road, but Amber and I thought we had a pretty good idea about where it was.

To make a long story short, we misjudged how far up the highway Buck Creek was, and we mistakenly took the wrong forest service road (known as Huckleberry Creek). Luckily we didn't drive too far down it before I realized that it looked wrong, and we pulled over and asked some mountain bikers where Buck Creek was. As it turned out, we needed to get back on the highway and drive about another 10 minutes.
Well, we finally made it to our destination (an hour later!!!) but we still weren't sure where the riding trails were. Thankfully, a nice man pointed us in the right direction, but he warned us that there were a lot of blow downs on all of the trail systems, and that they had not been cleared yet.

Not to be deterred, Amber and I took off and rode for about one hour, most of which was spent trying to maneuver around giant areas where massive trees had blown down (see above pictures). There wasn't a lot of underbrush, so we were able to get around a lot of the damage, but we eventually came to an area that had over 10 ginormous trees, with no easy way around them.

On our way out, we stopped and chatted with some people who were camping with their horses, and they told us that they belonged to a local riding club, and that every Memorial Day weekend, about 60 of them camp out with their panonies and clear the trails. They also said that this year was one of the worst years they had seen in over 30 years (as far as blow downs go). Amber and I were like "Seriously??? We just drove all the way up here to find out that we came up one week too early???" LOL!!!!

So we cowgirled up, loaded the panonies back in the trailer, and headed back down towards civilization. We figured that we would stop at one of the many designated horseback riding areas on the way back down, and we pulled over at a place called Mud Mtn. Dam (knowing full well that the trail was washed out in certain areas due to flooding).

Surprisingly, the boys seemed happy to be heading back out, and away we went. The above picture is just as we were heading down into the basin, which is an area that is used to hold excess water back from the dam when it floods. You can just make out two excavators that had recently cleared a major wash-out/mudslide, and see the grassy area towards the left of the river? That is where we were headed.

(It was kind of bittersweet riding out there too, because we used to trailer out there and ride when I was younger, and the last time I had been down to the basin, I was on my bucking bronc, Shadest)

We carefully rode out towards the edge of the river, and you can see Waska looking back at me like "Are you sure you want to go over there???"

So onwards we went, and I am going to write about the rest of ride later, as this post is getting too long!

I hope you all had wonderful weekends, and I look forward to catching up (yet again!!) on your blogs. :)