Arrowhead Ranch: Afternoon Badlands Trail Ride

After our 6 mile morning Badlands trail ride, we enjoyed a relaxing lunch on Starry Night Ranch’s front porch, while our ponies enjoyed some rest and a lunch of hay.

And then we tacked up and headed back out for an afternoon Badlands Trail Ride.

During our morning trail ride, we headed south into the BLM San Jose Badlands, but for our afternoon trail ride, we were heading north through Julie’s private ranch and across several of her neighbor’s ranches, too.

This area we were riding to isn’t part of the BLM, but is all on private property. So, the only way to visit, is to have permission from the ranch owners.

Joining us on this trail ride was my friend Peggy’s friend, CeCe…and her gorgeous gaited palomino gelding.

And my friend Colleen and her mare.

And along with CeCe, Peggy and Colleen, there was also my friend Loeta, and of course, Julie…who took this photo of me and my Apache mare below.

Loeta took these photos with her camera, which she had her camera settings on low resolution…so they are rather blurry with minimal pixels.

Julie took us to an area with an old homestead and a handmade pottery kiln.

We rode through an arroyo lined on one side by beautiful cliffs and on the other side with tall ponderosas.

At one point Apache and I got far behind and we took a shortcut up and over a rocky ridge. Loeta captured this photo of us from down below, while Apache wanted to keep moving across the rocky ridge….so girlfriend and I had a little ‘discussion’.

We discovered this awesome cave set into an impressive cliff and ………..

We just had to ride our horses inside to explore.

Next we encountered this fallen tree across our arroyo trail. The only way to go was under it. ACTHA Competitions have a similar challenge called a Vine Obstacle. I doubt that any ACTHA ride has one like this, though.

And it’s best to have a short horse when attempting an obstacle like this one….a short horse that assists you in bending as low as possible…like my amazing trail horse Apache mare!

On this Badlands ride we also saw lots of hoodoos!

Don’t these look like mushrooms?

But the best was yet to come…and this photo was taken right about the time that my tears started flowing. Not because I was sad or unhappy. No way! These were tears of joy upon experiencing the stunning beauty all around us!

These sculptures reminded me of people standing on pedestals having a meeting of sorts.

It’s difficult to tell in this photo, but they were all at least 25 feet tall!

I named this one Phallic Rock.

This photo with Loeta and Colleen, of what appears to be a woman wearing a long dress, gives a better idea of the tall height of these natural-made statues.

This area was just awe inspiring!

But it was soon to get even more amazing! Julie led the way over this hill and into an area that looked just like a mini-grand canyon!

Apache and I rode to the edge and looked down 50-60 feet into this incredibly amazing canyon! She and I were both overwhelmed with the beauty and uniqueness of this place. We just stood and admired all of the details inside the canyon, for the longest time.

I was enamored with these mud spatter mushrooms and was fascinated pondering the forces that went into creating such a unique formation.

Those same mud spatter mushrooms are just down below and to the right of Apache’s head.

Loeta took a photo of Apache ad I standing at the edge of this mini-canyon.

I am not kidding when I say that Apache was just as impressed with this area as I was. At one point, we walked over to our group who were admiring a different canyon on the opposite side of the main ridge peninsula that we were standing on, but all of a sudden Apache turned around, and curious…I dropped my reins to see where she wanted to go and what she wanted to see. She left our group behind and rode directly behind some trees where another peninsula-like ridge, which was very narrow, jutted right into the middle of the mini-canyon. And with her reins dropped, she walked herself right to the edge of that peninsula, with the mini-canyon surrounding us on all 3 sides…….. and we stopped. And we stood there for about 10 minutes just admiring the views and stunning scenery.

Have I mentioned before how much I love my horse and how much alike we are???

After a while, we left behind the mini-canyon and rode beneath the high ridges, and I managed to capture this stunning photo of Julie and her horse.

It was getting late in the day and we had already been riding for several hours, so we started to head back to Starry Night Ranch.

Of course, the ride back wasn’t boring in the least bit.

At one point we had a very steep hill to navigate down. This is something I think is a lot of fun……but I like to wait until we’re the last ones, so no one is ever crowding us from behind and we can take our time riding downhill.

Loeta took a photo of Apache and I at the top of the hill just as we were beginning our descent down. I think the way the light is shining from behind us is very pretty….

We continued riding downhill, but more gradual, while enjoying beautiful vistas spread out before us.

I love that Apache enjoys riding way in the back, basically by ourselves, but not entirely alone.

But Apache made me laugh when she stepped up our pace when she finally realized we weren’t too far from Julie’s ranch. You can see the pointy, little, white hill that sits beside her ranch house far off in the distance, just to the right of that spiky cliff formation in front of us to the left.

This was a fun section where we trotted ad cantered down the trail way out in front by ourselves. It was also where I lost my Camelbak water bottle, too. :(

But you can see Julie’s tiny, white, pointy hill on the far left upper side of this photo.

Most of Julie’s neighbor’s run cattle on their land, and since we were riding through their ranches, we encountered a lot of cattle…..like this friendly cow that followed us, and mooed often, for about a half mile, until we reached Julie’s ranch gate.

Apache really thought we should go herd that cow back to her herd, but I had to convince her that heading back to Starry Night Ranch, and her water bucket and big pile of hay and her wet mash would be a better idea.

At the end of the day, my GPS said we had ridden 7 miles. So with the 6 miles we had ridden that morning, we rode a total of 13 miles that day, so we were all tired and hungry. We did a potluck together and I grilled up some burgers and hot dogs, and then we had a campfire.