Tuff e Nuff Quarter Horses: Hitting the trails

Friday night Chase and I headed up to Brushy Creek for an overnight trail ride. This was the first “overnight” we’ve done this year. I don’t typically take Chase up to Brushy because the trails are a little more challenging but I felt he was finally up for the challenge. I didn’t think he was up to the challenge w/Abby though so he took Sis and I took Lu.

We got up there late Fri. night and parking was quite the task (he almost backed me into a tree). We finally got settled and snuggled down for the night. Sat. we got up and headed out on the trails.

Right off of the trail head is a steep hill. Chase was a little nervous but this quickly became his favorite trail head.

The weather was perfect and the trees were lovely. We went South on Saturday and ended up down by the river.

One of my favorite signs. It reads “trail closed”

On the way back we found an old warming house. Chase thought it was the coolest thing so he pulled the DNR guy over and asked him what it was for. It was an old snowmobile warming house that hadn’t been used in 20+ years.

Sat. night we had a bonfire with farm fresh steaks, potatoes, green beans and of course – smores! Chase was in bed and out cold by 9:00. lol

Sunday we headed towards the spillway. These are my all time favorite pics from this weekend.

Up, up, up and away

When we made it to the spillway Chase said “I’m not crossing that!” I informed him he had no other choice. He told me he did, he could turn around and go back. In the picture you’ll notice the water in the top right-hand corner of the picture. That is where we normally cross. There is typically a sand bar there that you follow and then you cross a short section of water to the other side. Last time DH and I went up the deep part was up to my ankles. When I took Lu down into the shallow I was in up to my ankles and I could feel her going in deeper and deeper. I was pretty uncomfortable pushing her to go in any further since I know that was the “shallow” section so I backed out and opted to try to navigate the top part.

We don’t typically take the top because a) it is very rocky and b) the current is pretty strong. I coaxed Lu out into it and told Chase to stay behind. After we crossed safely I had him bring Sis on through. You can’t tell from the pic but that is a straight up & down jump up out of the water. Chase (and Sis) handled it very well.