Day #26

I woke up feeling great, after an off day yesterday. The farrier was coming to trim the two horses front feet and put on pads along with shoes.

The terrain here is full of sharp rocks and we felt the horses needed more protection. You can see from the photos that he took off a good deal of hoof and then formed pads to fit the inside bottom of the hooves. He used silicone chalking to "glue" the pads in the bottom, but before that he applied some medication to fight thrush. It would be bad to have thrush growing under those pads.

I took a solo ride at 3:00 in the afternoon. There was supposed to be a high chance of rain, but the sun was still shining, so off I rode.

Blaze was feeling good and so we gaited out the wash, through the underpass and up the trail. I chose to go to the right on a trail we had not ridden before. It was a steep climb and then back down and out to a trail with an actual sign on it. It was the Bob Grover Trail. Made me wonder who he was and why he had a trail named after him, I will try to ask around and find out.

The trail was steep to start and then ran along the ridge of that mountain top. It was a nice path, no rocks, unlike most around here. Then it climbed and got rocky,

They had predicted rain and I could see from the sky that we were

about to get some. It was a light rain and cooled down the air right away. Blaze and I didn't mind at all. We kept riding and saw that someone was maintaining this trail. The cholla and prickly pear cactus had been hacked off, probably with a machete, all along the trail so you didn't have to push by them.

When I got to the other end of the trail, there was another identical sign marking it. I decided I had better turn and go back the way I had come, since it was getting late and I didn't know if the trail would turn toward camp.

As I climbed back to the peak, I could see lightening striking on a distant mountain. I was glad it wasn't my mountain top.

As we gaited back to camp, we came upon a bull and some cows in the main wash. He just looked at us and moved his herd along. I was

glad he didn't take offense.

Blaze cooperated and I was able to open and close the gate from his back. He is such a steady Eddy. Gotta love him.

Till tomorrow.
Blessings, Pam