Shelly is joining the army and off for base training next week, so we loaded the horses in Stephanie’s big trailer and hauled them to the fairly close Hal Scott Regional Park & Preserve for a last farewell trail ride.
We were a party of 4 girls, 4 horses and 1 dog: Stephanie rode her older mare Patty and brought along a neighbor, Susan who I had not met before riding her thoroughbred mix JD. Shelly rode Stephanie’s other mare, Patty’s sister Bita and my Brownie had to carry me of course. Stephanie’s australian shephard Joseph is just a perfectly behaved dog and you barely notice him at all on a trail ride.
The ride was fun, great company and an awesome, exiting, breathtaking gallop within the sandy horse-friendly trails along the Econlockhatchee River and flat-wood prairie.
Back at the barn we met Gwen, a new boarder and went to Canaveral Groves with her to pick up her shagya arabian mare Endre, a horse with the best endurance bloodlines. She’s 6 years old and Gwen is just breaking her right now. She bought her only 3 weeks ago, so she hasn’t been on any trails yet but is definitely interested.
I didn’t want to ride the bike back home, because we still had some grocery shopping to do, so Jon picked me up and we stopped by Wal-Mart on the way home.
I ran my 8 miles, starting nervous and stressed out, but after a while the relaxing component of running in the rain kicked in and when I finally came home I felt great.
It was also time to start making dinner, because we had Stephanie, Shelly and Jeremy over. The first time we had real guests at our new house.
Everybody liked the burgers we made on the grill, the cheesecake the Stephanie brought was just so delicious and we had a lot of fun looking at each other’s photos of prior events and horses.
It was a great, full day and a fun night.
Looks like those weekends at home are not as calm as they used to be before we met those guys…
