Mountainair Trail Ride

 

On Sunday, the day after our San Lorenzo Canyon Trail Ride, most of our group of ladies that drove in from out of town, headed back home after breakfast. The rest of us locals, Kendra, Karen A. And Karen R. and me, set to work tacking up our horses for a trail ride around Kendra’s ranch, two of her neighbor’s ranches, and exploring along country roads.

Apache and I on Kendra’s ranch with the Manzano Mountains as a backdrop behind us.

Karen A., Me, and Kendra

The two Karens

Kendra has a lovely little arroyo that travels along the back half of her property. During late Spring/ early Summer, her arroyo typically has running water as well as a small pond, that Apache and I had the opportunity to play in last year in June. Sadly, this year the drought is keeping the arroyo dry as a bone.

But you can see photos of her lush, green arroyo trail from our June 2012 Trail Ride: Ojitos de Dios Ranch

Some of the trees were just beginning to leaf out, though, and the green tips of grass were poking up through the ground, so perhaps there is hope after all, if we just get some rain soon.

 

Kendra’s ranch has been in her husband’s family for generations. It was once a pinto bean farm and still has the irrigation pipes sticking out into the arroyo to siphon water.

The arroyo is lined on either side by high dirt walls and tall shrubs and trees.

 

In the summer, and with enough moisture, this arroyo feels like a jungle!

 

The section of rock covered arroyo below, is usually filled with fast, deep running water during the summer monsoon season.

 

After getting the grand tour of Kendra’s ranch, we rode a little distance up the road to her neighbor’s ranch, where the rancher doesn’t actually live, but usually grazes cattle. But the cattle have already been sent off for slaughter, so we didn’t get to ride with any cattle that day. Kind of a bummer, too, as Apache is very interested in cattle.

The two Karen’s waiting as Kendra closes the gate.

This neighbor’s ranch is about 100 acres, just big enough for us to explore and play.

Speaking of playing…….this is our own equine version of Ring-Around-the-Rosie!

 

Mostly we just wandered around.

Looking for interesting things, like this old rusted car in the bottom of an arroyo, which at first, Apache was spooked by, but I asked her to stand at the edge of the arroyo until she was relaxed and finally said, “No big deal, Mom”.

 

At one point, the two Karens and Kendra decided to do some cantering, but I wanted to do something different with Apache, so we separated and they went north and we rode south.

What I wanted to do was practice riding on our own, and away from the ‘safety’ of the other horses. We don’t get the opportunity to do this very often, because even when we ride with others and stay back by ourselves, we usually still have our friends within sight.

I gave Apache a job to do, which was circling trees and weaving in and out of groves of trees, where we totally lost sight of our trail riding buddies.

Apache was so good and only once or twice lifted her head to look for our friends, but she never called out, or balked or tried to leave and find our friends.

She stayed on task and we had a grand time exploring the ranch on our own. 

And after a while, our friends joined us and followed whatever path we took, as we weaved in and out of tree groves and circled trees and shrubs, which was rather fun and felt like a game of Train.

And then I asked Apache to wait while our friends rode down into an arroyo.

And she stood patiently as we watched each of our friends ride through the arroyo and up and out further down.

Apache was fascinated with the cattle pen and chutes. The windmill made some loud creaky noises as it spun and turned in the wind, but Apache wasn’t at all concerned.

We left the Rancher’s land and rode the country roads. And Apache and I did something we had never done before: trotted for a very long time! We ended up trotting for 2 miles straight! Our friends cantered those 2 miles, but Apache seemed to prefer trotting to cantering and I was able to get her to canter a few strides and she would drop back down to a trot. So trot we did…a lot! I have tons of admiration for Endurance riders who trot for 10-15 miles at a time. I posted for a while, but wore myself out and sat the trot for most of it instead. Apache has a choppy, little trot, that at times, when she really tries, almost feels like she’s gaited. But we cover a lot of ground when she trots, so it’s not too bad.  

Kendra left Apache’s BFF, Bailey, back at the barn, and was riding her cart-driving pony, Poncho, instead.

You can see Poncho pulling Kendra and I in his cart in my blog post: Horses, Pups and Four-Wheelin'

Kendra has lots of fun on her horses, as you can see.

She not only rode backwards on Poncho, but she rode backwards, with no reins, at a trot!

I really enjoyed riding the country roads around Kendra’s ranch. The views are incredible, the houses are few, and the roads clear of any traffic. The entire day we rode, we only encountered one truck that slowed down as it drove past us.

But while I didn’t mind the country road riding, Apache was not as fond of it. I think she found it terribly boring, and she just slowed to a crawl, as if she was sleep walking. I had to keep asking her to move up to a trot so we could catch up with our friends.

Apache enjoyed it when we came upon anything interesting, like a small herd of 4 young horses that ran along the fence with us.

And she was completely fascinated with this ranch gate and fence, and totally ignored the fact that our friends had left us. I had dropped my reins to see what she would do, and she just strolled right over to those crow silhouettes and sniffed them. She probably would have stopped and visited every single one of those crows had I let her. But I didn’t want to get too far behind our friends.

The weather was very confused that day, and it started off cold and windy, then changed to hot and windy, and then would flip flop back to cold and windy again. I was glad that I wore a vest and long sleeve t-shirt, which kept me very comfortable, so I didn’t have to constantly remove and put back on, a bulky denim jacket like poor Kendra had to do all day.

Apache and I had to do a lot of trotting that day to catch up with our friends. I enjoyed her slow walking pace, but at times I wished her walk was a little faster so we could ride beside our friends.

You would think that Apache would figure out, that if she walked faster, she wouldn’t have to trot so much. But perhaps she enjoys trotting, and is just fine with her slow pace?

Apache was probably getting a bit tired, too. We had already ridden about 8 miles already, when we finally arrived at another of Kendra’s neighbors, who lives about 3 miles from Kendra’s ranch.

Kendra’s husband had already driven over there for a visit, when we arrived with our 4 horses. He seemed surprised to see us, and her neighbors offered us some cowboy coffee after we tied our horses at the wood fence, and we all sat outside around a cozy campfire in their courtyard. Kendra’s neighbors are building this one room vacation log cabin by themselves on their 40 acre property.

All 4 of our horses seemed to appreciate the rest stop, and Apache even took a nap.

But after 20 minutes we hopped back on our horses and headed the 3 miles back to Kendra’s ranch.

The two Karens riding across Kendra’s neighbor’s ranch. 

Kendra and Poncho bringing up the rear, with the log cabin behind us.

Apache grabbing a little snack for the road…..

Riding West towards the Manzano Mountains.

By the end of the day, we figured we rode a total of about 11 miles and had lots of fun and adventures along the way.

I also got to try out my new 5/8” wide round 9.5 feet long trail reins and I just love ‘em! They are so thin and comfortable in my hands and they may just be my most favorite reins now, even more than my 10 ft long flat black cotton reins. And I love the red color on Apache, too.

If anyone is interested, this is where I bought them:

Performance Tack

They also sell flat reins, and the thicker 1/2 inch wide reins, too.