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Monday, August 13, 2007

The Girls' Dream Comes True

Sunday the girls got their biggest wish of all... we went horseback riding. They had been asking to do this for years and quite honestly, I never thought J would agree to it. But whatever the reason, he did this time. Well, it would actually be more accurate to say that he didn't say no. J does not like to say yes to much of anything... if he really doesn't want to do it, he has no problem saying "no". However, if he doesn't mind doing it, he rarely says yes, instead he leaves the decision making up to me.

When we were planning this trip the girls were trying to get us to agree to either horseback riding, whitewater rafting or both. I really didn't want to do the rafting so we opted for the horses. But crazy me, told the girls we could do the 2 hour ride instead of the one hour... it would still be cheaper than doing both. HA! What was I thinking????
(This isn't us... it's the group that went before us.)

Everyday that we have been in Yellowstone, we have done some sort of hiking. Somedays it has been lots of little trips, one day we did a 4 mile hike up to the top of a peak (1300 elevation climb in 2 miles). I have never been as sore from any of the hiking as I was from one 2 hour horse ride. My legs were numb... my backside sore... I was worried that I wasn't even going to get myself off the horse at the end. But I managed it... with some help.

However, the pain was so worth it just to see the smiles on the girls faces. They were in 7th Heaven. I know this is one thing that they will always remember.

K3 had to ride up front 2nd in line behind the lead wrangler because of her age... they wanted the kids under 12 up front. She was on Ringo, a pretty brown w/brown main. K2 was just ahead of me on Wayne, a tall brown w/black mane. She laughed at me because then they brought me my horse, Bull, which was shorter than hers! Ummm... how did I get a smaller horse than K2?? Although I have to admit that Bull was a true work horse with pretty palomino coloring... he knew what to do and when to do it... except that he continuously tried to snatch up some greens as we walked the trail. K1 was behind me on Zach, another tall horse. J was next on Travis, an extremely large dark brown (almost black) horse that doubles as a Mack truck.

The wranglers took us on an 8 mile trip that started us up a switchback trail to the top of a plateau and a pretty meadow. Then we were led into a forrested area along the poison cliffs ("one drop will kill ya"). We slowly made our way down hill to cross Lost Creek and eventually came out at a beautiful meadow where Lost Lake sat. We then came around a hill and could see the location of the Petrified tree. As we were riding closer, people were pointing and looking our way. We waved to them until K2 said, "Look, an elk!" HA! They weren't pointing at us... they were watching the elk. Our ride continued on across a road and thru a dry sage brush meadow. Eventually, we did another switchback trail and a few more loping hills and returned to the corral.

I was never so happy to see anyplace in all my life!

Despite being parched (we weren't allowed to bring anything on the trail ride... no water, no camera) and sore, we were also filthy. It has been extremely dry in Yellowstone this summer... 5 days of rain since mid-June. So the trails were DUSTY! and we were near the head of the line... I can't imagine what the people near the end of the trail ride looked like.

After our trial ride, (which in total took 3 hours!), we drove the northern border road between Roosevelt Lodge and Mammoth Hot Springs. This road is under construction and we have been avoiding it as we didn't want to wait up to 30 minutes to drive it. However, the road is nearly completed and they didn't have any crews working it on a Sunday so we were able to drive it with no problems whatsoever.

After a quick stop in Mammoth for ice cream, we headed for home. We were tired, sore and dirty and didn't really want to stop on our way back. So when we saw cars pulled over for elk... we kept on driving. However, we came to one spot where we saw lots of cars and didn't see any obvious elk so we slowed... there running parallel with the road was a coyote (our third one this trip but our first that we could get a picture of).


We were too tired to cook so we stopped at Pete's Pizza (fantastic!)... went back to the hotel and had showers.

It was a great day!

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