Red Mountain is Green

Today we took Beauty, June, and Highboy to Red Mountain for the first time this season.  I was astonished at how green it was.  We had some rain at our place about two weeks ago, but it quickly dried out and everything here is now looking sort of burnt.  When we got up to a little higher altitude at the Red Mountain parking area things were the greenest I've ever seen there.

We did about a nine mile loop, and the horses sure enjoyed themselves.  Highboy with his long legs led most of the way.  June prefers to act like she's in charge of everything, so she made some faces at Highboy and Beauty, but ultimately decided she was ok with Highboy leading.

There were a few sections of trail where we did some trotting, and it quickly became obvious just how much taller Highboy is at 17 hands than June and Beauty are at near 15 hands each.  Highboy was trotting, and Beauty kicked it into another gear with her sewing machine trot.  She was so fast that Alice could barely keep up with posting.  June decided that was silly and just loped instead.  Eventually Beauty began to canter as well, since Highboy had launched into his big extended trot.  Highboy could hear the mares cantering behind him, and he though that he should canter too!  At that point I just stopped him and we resumed our walk before things got too out of hand.

We took a little time to let the horses drink, and Highboy played in the water at the crossing.  All three horses are seasoned water ponies so there were no troubles other than the mares being really insistent that they should get to snack on the weeds.

One of my favorite parts of this trail ride is going through Ruby Wash.  The rocks are so incredibly red, and adding the brilliant green to it made it especially scenic today.

When we finally returned to the horse trailer we discovered another trailer had parked near us.  It had goats painted on the sides.  While we were loading the horses up to go home the woman and her pack-goat returned to the parking area and we got to meet them!  The goat's name is LeDoux, and he is a year old Nubian/Lamancha cross.  He is learning how to pack so that once he's fully grown he can do big hikes with his owner.  She also owns mammoth mules, and rides them.