Counselor, New Mexico to Gubanador, New Mexico
Trail trip! That's just like a road trip, only it's on horseback! How awesome is that! We went twenty miles today on the horses. My "sit bones" and knees are very sore. I'm walkin' a little bowlegged right now! But what a cool trip this was!
I borrowed one of Jane and Don's horses, named Jasper. He is a good, solid horse that Pat calls, "bomb proof." In other words, he doesn't get easily ruffled by things you might see on the trail. Pat rode Cracker the mule, Stefan rode Chester the mule, Jane rode T-bone, and I rode Jasper. Chester started giving Stefan a bad time as soon as we got out of the gate. Chester takes advantage of you, if you can't control him, and Stefan was having a hard time. Pat considered making him stay behind, but Stefan finally managed to kind of get Chester under control, so off we went.
We started out by crossing the Largo . . . walking across it instead of taking the bridge, because so many trucks were driving by. Then we took the road up a long hill. I was worried about Jasper because he's not use to riding too far at once, and he was hot and sweaty when we got up the hill. We had only gone a mile or two! But, he was fine.
The next challenge was finding water for the horses. Pat had mapped out what she thought were water holes, using Google Earth, but sometimes they're empty. We finally found one, and I was so glad because I thought Jasper would be really thirsty. All he wanted to do was eat the grass around the little pond. That old adage about "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink," is true! He was totally not interested in getting a drink.
Back on the rode again. Pat had all the maps and the GPS, and she showed us which way to go. We hit a couple more watering holes that were empty, and then found a nice one. Jasper drank a lot of water this time! There were all ages of frogs and tadpoles in this little pond. Cracker went all the way into the pond with Pat on his back. He went up to his knees in mud. Then Pat got him out, and started unfolding the map. Cracker freaked out! I was off Jasper, just leading him around and Cracker almost ran me over! Pat had to put the map away. Earlier, Cracker freaked when he heard the sound of Pat's water bottle sloshing around, so Jane had to carry the water bottle for Pat.
Pat thought there were some picnic benches up by the oil well installation, so we walked up there. We looked all over and couldn't find the picnic benches, but the gates were open and we saw guys inside sitting under a big sun umbrella. Pat walks up to them on Cracker and jokingly asked what's for lunch. They invited us in! We tied up the horses outside the gate in the shade and went inside their lunch trailer. They had their own cook for all the oil field guys. We got soft drinks and lunch in a air conditioned trailer! It was awesome! What a cool adventure this was turning out to be! A cold drink in that kind of heat was too much to ask for!
I don't think we were halfway yet, so we didn't stay long and went back out to the horses. On the way, Pat spotted a shedded snake skin . . . it was about five feet long and probably from a bull snake. It was cool. Besides Cracker occasionally misbehaving, everybody else did great. Chester had his moments, but for the most part, he was fine, too. Stefan did a great job.
During the trip, I would periodically take my feet out of the stirrups. When you're sitting that way, it affects different muscles. After awhile, both sets of muscles were pretty sore! We got out of the saddle and walked the horses for a little while, and that felt pretty good. There are a lot of cell phone towers out here in the wilderness because of all the oil fields, so Pat and Jane both called their husbands to say that we were doing fine and would be home soon.
We crossed a big, dry riverbed and then we were finally close to home. I spotted a petroglyph of a corn plant. It's pretty classic, but I don't think I've seen one before except in books. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera. I just couldn't see carrying it on this long trip. Then, Pat, who was far behind me, yelled something about a hawk. I'm looking up in the air looking for the hawk, and it turned out to be an incredibly cool thunderbird carved into a rock. It had a circle around it. Then, up a little ways, there was huge round shield carved in the rock across the way from where we rode. It must be really big for us to see from that far away. This is such cool country.
By this time, I couldn't get comfortable in the saddle. Everything and everyplace hurt. It was just hard to sit up! Finally, home! We unsaddled the horses, and went into Jane and Don's house for some cold drinks and brownies. I was so glad to be out of the saddle! But, what an incredibly great trip it turned out to be! Don drove everybody . . . mules included . . . back to Largo Canyon. We sang Stefan cowboy songs all the way home. Nobody complained about my singing!
:)
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