Where does the Time Go?

Wow, it just seems like yesterday we were back from our Picacho Mountain ride and here we are a week later. Over the last week we have done a few interesting things and really haven’t had to much time to lay about so I guess that makes the time fly. We got home last Sunday morning and Bill and Margaret were here to greet us. Margaret was flying back to Terrace for a visit with her mom Liz and Bill is going to hold down the fort here with us at Dogpound South. Shouldn’t be to long before Brenda puts that handy kind of guy to work around the rancho here. So I thought I better get him out on a horse before he got put to work.

We took a spin up Vekol Wash and because there is a minimal amount of cactus along the trail this is one that we take the dogs along with us.  Tuesday was a day to catch up with our neighbours and we stopped by the McKinney’s place to convince them that they better be coming with us on Wednesday up to Black Canyon City. We also had a visitor from above, now we know Ivan has headed over the hill to the East so wonder who is controlling this surveillance drone.

Well we were up at Terri and Chucks place talking trailriding we managed to also get ourselves invited to dinner there and enjoyed some great steaks and all the trimmings.

Wednesday we were off to the Black Canyon Trailhead north of Phoenix to connect up with the Skyline Trail and cut through to the Little Pan Trailhead. Wow, is all I can say, each and every time we get behind “K” and Teresa they take us on an even more beautiful trail.

Here is a shot of our trail leader and friend “K” and his partner Amigo.

This trail has a lot of ups and downs we crossed that river below and began yet another climb up to the ridge tops. It is hard to isolate just a few pictures here so I will share some of my favourites and you can follow this link to all the rest I took that day.

Coming round the mountain, Brenda and Willow

The crew from the left Chuck and Terri and their dughter Taylor, Brenda and I, Lisa (Terri’s friend) and our guide “K”

K’s better half Teresa was down below this old Indian Fort holding onto the horses.

The ride was fantastic and I could have gone back the next day and done it all over again, but Thursday was our day at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. There were a lot of beautiful horses here but my favourite event was the traditional dress class. Tough to imagine racing across the desert on a raid dressed in this fancy get up but I suppose it would reflect the sun back into your opponents eyes and blind him. There was a trade show associated with this event but it didn’t take us long to figure out that we didn’t have a high enough limit on our credit line to do much shopping there.

Friday Bill and I headed into Casa Grande to pick up a few supplies for a project we have next week and stopped in at Eva’s for a little sustenance. Of course after all that shopping and a filling lunch we thought we should take another spin up the wash and loosen up some muscles for the horses.

Saturday was the T.A.C.C. Gymkhana and Willow and I were heading out early in the morning for that event. It began with a Horsemanship Clinic where we did some groundwork and then it was onto the gymkhana events, starting with barrel racing, and a pole race and the surprise event was a cloverleaf barrel pattern. My niece Caron has ridden Willow pretty regularly at our gymkhana’s back home so she is pretty familar with the regular barrel and pole patterns but that fourth barrel in the cloverleaf pattern threw her off her stride for a second or two. Not that it matters she is still a much faster horse than I am a rider so with me holding her back we occupied our regular spot far down the time list. Nevertheless we had fun and that is what it is all about and we are figuring out the technical issues and our times are getting faster each time. By the time I am seventy and Willow is 26 we should be ready to take on the next faster class…lol.

As you can plainly see we are moving so fast that the camera can’t keep up.

 

Follow this link if you want to see the rest of our gymkhana pictures.