She's Road Trippin' Somewhere

Day 1
Friday came early, was up way before the alarm went off. Piddled around the house cleaning things up and packing last minute things. Was on the road by 6:15 am, Moj was settled in the front seat, sound asleep.

Jenny and Clark called me when I had just left Lincoln. They said that the highway from Alma to Colby was Ice/Snowpack covered. $hit!!!!!! I sooo did not want to hear that since I was driving the Camaro and had been warned by friends and hubby that I should take the truck because the weather ‘could be bad’. Of course my stubborn a$$ said “Oh, I’ll be just FINE!” and proceeded to take the Camaro anyway.

I did a quick glance at the map and decided to drop down at York on Hwy 81 that would take me into Kansas. Chatted with some friends to see what the best way would be and decided to take Hwy 36 out of Belleview KS west to Petersberg and then south to Hwy 24 which would take me into Colby. I did a road check at 9:30 and the interstate into Colorado was still closed….what the heck!! I certainly didn’t want to get stuck in Colby for an extended period of time….I had a hair appointment at 3:30 mountain time.

Um!! We aren't IN NEBRASKA ANYMORE!!!!

Never did hit any snow until Hoxie Kansas and even then the roads were still dry. I checked the roads again and heard that I-70 was finally open…whoo hoo…clear sailing for me!!!!!

Coming into Colby was another matter though. Got stuck behind a snow plow that was going 40 mph. Couldn’t really pass him so I was stuck going that slow. The roads in Colby were slushy and messy. The gas station lot was snowpacked/slush and ice. YUK! The Camaro got initiated into the world of snow, ice, salt and sand. But the sun was out and life was good.

Once on I-70 things were a piece of cake. Made up some lost time and rolled into Limon at a decent hour. Only 90 some miles left to go…..I’m going to make my hair appointment yet. Ha ha. I love this hill coming down out of Limon. There is a gorgeous horse ranch at the bottom with Pike’s Peak in the distance. I know here that my trip is nearly done.

Got to Jen’s house and the sun was out again and the temps were fairly warm. Moji and Gidget played outside for a long time and Jen and I went to the salon. Moj went along too and slept in the car….yet again.

The rest of the evening was spent catching up, plus we had a big day planned for Saturday.

Day 2
Spent the morning lazing around the house, watching the dogs play. We did have to be up in Denver by 12 for our ‘Indoor Skydiving’ appointment. On the way up, we stopped at Castle Rock and did some shopping at the outlet stores. Ok, really didn’t plan on buying anything, but I did.

Finally made it up to Skyventure and didn’t get too lost trying to find it. That was a blast! When it was my turn to ‘fly’, I couldn’t quit laughing and got bounced and rolled all over. The poor instructor kept telling me to relax and I kept laughing. Air was being forced up my nose, my feet were getting bounced all over, I kept trying to get sucked out the doors to the antechamber. It was a fiasco for 60 seconds. Jenny did awesome though, she floated all over in there. The second time around though I did much better and was more relaxed. There is a DVD of us flying, not sure if I will share the funny one or not yet. Ha ha.

Headed back to the Springs to get ready to go Trick or Treating with the boys. Jen and I took the dogs for a walk by the dog park. Moj loved that…a nice hilly mile walk…I about DIED!! So not used to the altitude or the hills that we climbed. Moji got to go on the walk about for Trick or Treating. He did real good, didn’t bark at any of the kids running up on him or running from house to house.

Went back home and checked out the boyz’ loot. They gave me stuff that they didn’t like….cool with me…more road trip food.

Day 3
Spent the day being lazy yet again. Attempted to watch the Nascar race…ouch, my 2 car didn’t do so hot and got wrecked at the end with 3 laps to go. Jenny did talk me into going to her obedience class at 1 pm. I’m glad that I did. Moj was a good distraction for the group and he did fairly good for not being taken to a class at all!! I really enjoyed working with her trainer. He spent a lot of extra time working with Jen and making sure she knew what he was talking about.

Made it back home to see the end of the race…..cringed a lot.

Went and washed the salt and grime of the car before heading to New Mexico on Monday morning.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out with the boyz.

Day 3
Drove to New Mexico and made it down there in real good time..shocked my Dad that I showed up in only 6 ½ hours. Hmmmm, didn’t really speed that fast and only made 2 stops for fuel.

Once we were settled, Dad and I took Moj for a 2 mile walk. Oh, that was sooo much easier than in Colorado Springs…the ground is FLAT there.

Caught up on things and crashed fairly early. I still wasn’t used to all the time changes that I did and was jet lagging.

Day 4
Ran Moj for a bit and then hung out at the house. Dad and I headed to the shooting range and practiced with the pistols. Had a lot of fun doing that, 3 hours flew by fast. Later in the afternoon, we took a drive over to Bitter Lake which is a wildlife refuge. Snow Geese and Sandhill cranes were already there for the winter. Took JoAnn for a ride in the Camaro later in the afternoon when we ran over to Wal-mart to get some fruit and things.

Day 5
Drove up to Capitan, Riudoso and Hondo to see the sights. Had a good time and saw some beautiful scenery. Couldn’t believe how time flew, we were gone almost 6 hours. Went out for Tex Mex and had marguaritas….yum!! Hung out with JoAnn while Dad cleaned guns and fiddled out in his shop.

Day 6
Plans were to drive back to Colorado Springs in the morning. Dad and I took the dogs for a mile walk to get ‘Moj tired for the trip’….I don’t think I can ever tire that boy out!!!! He does ride well and sleeps most of the time.

Finished packing the car up and headed out by 9:15 am. Not much to see along the way, ranches, longhorn cattle, antelope, shredded tires in the road, cacti plants, hawk nests wedged in the power lines on the poles (didn’t figure that out until I saw the 3rd mass). I did see a Roadrunner dart across the road and a huge snake…ICK!! Avoided that one! Got to Colorado Springs around 3:30, just as I had pulled in the driveway, Andrew called and asked me when I was going to be there..I told him, look out in the driveway

Clark, Andrew and I piled back in the car and went to pick Christian and his friends up from school. 4 boys were packed in the backseat, Clark and Christian were in the passenger seat and I drove with backpacks squished all over. Wow!! That little car was packed with 7 people……..had the sunroof open and the windows down, the boys LOVED it!

Went out for pizza and then back home to get some things done for Jenny, had to download some music to her Blackberry and pictures from our phones. The boys played with the dogs. Everyone kinda headed to bed fairly early, it has been a long week.

Day 7
Up early, wanted to eat breakfast with the boys before they headed off to school. Planning on heading out of here around 8 am which should put me home around 6 pm. I am starting to miss Mike and the critters…and my BED.

I am so glad that I took this impromptu trip to see family. Some great memories were made and plans for a family vacation to Florida next year are now in the works. It will be fun to take the boys to the beach!!!

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Making Lemonade out of the lemons we got.

Woke up this morning when the alarm went off at oh, 4:15 am. Looked outside and saw a blanket of white. Not sure what happened to ‘just a dusting’ that we were supposed to have. Had about 2 to 3 inches on our deck rails by then. When I finally got out of bed to go feed the horses, we had a good 4 to 5 inches on the rails.

The horses were sooo pretty running up to the paddock with the trees and grass all white. Made a note to myself that I’d need to get back out and get some photos. Mike fixed breakfast for me…should ask him to do this more often! French toast was sooo yummy.

Listening to the Geese that are migrating through.

I just love his eye, basically, I just LOVE his whole personality. He's a keeper the big doof. Speaking of being a doof....the farrier came Thursday, a tad bit earlier than I had thought. Didn't matter, the horses ran to the paddock when they saw Greg. He was able to halter and trim them without too much problem. Cora stands perfectly for him, but AJ would try to grab her leadrope and 'steal' her away from Greg. Greg had to keep waving him off and when it came to be AJ's turn, AJ thought let's play games and didn't want to be caught. Once caught though he stood like a champ.

Headed back out and decided that I’d ride Cora for a bit too. Wasn’t too windy when I meandered back out there, but, within 15 minutes the wind started picking up and had a cold bite to it. Had miniature blizzards with all the snow coming off the trees.

Mike came up to get some photos of me loping her around and then he played a little bit with AJ. After he left, I took AJ out to the arena to play with him myself. Gosh he is so pretty when he trots, just floats.

such personality.....actually, he had just gotten a drink of water and was holding it in his mouth. I had the camera on multi-shot and kept clicking it as he was swallowing the water and licking his lips.....still quite funny to see him sticking his tongue out at me and making eye contact doing it!!

We played in the arena for about 15 minutes or until I couldn't feel my finger tips anymore. I just love watching this boy move.

can't see his eye too well in here, but he was making eye contact with Moji who was playing with him on the other side of the fence. I keep saying how athletic this boy is.

Love that trot!

'mini blizzards' coming off the trees.

After playing with the horses, it was time to get some new pictures of Moji. He’s such a ham, but so dang fast!

Here's another keeper---Kansakaws Crown Royal Ahamo

Moji and believe me, he works his Mojo on everyone he sees!

You can't catch me ole man!!!!!

Riding the Oak Creek Trail

Earlier in the week, Tammy invited me to try to get Friday afternoon off to go riding the Oak Creek Trail with her and Sheila. I told her that I was game and to keep me posted on the weather.

Friday morning came and 60% chance of t-storms were predicted. I told her that I’m game and we are going no matter what. Doesn’t matter on this trail as it’s for horses only so if it gets torn up, no one will complain. We just need to keep off the limestone trail as much as possible.

I call Tammy as I went by Morse Bluff….she said I’m driving in a downpour can you hear it?! I said yes! But I have just grey clouds here. She said it’s coming and sure enough it did!!

Drove through that and made it to Valparaiso in one piece and had clearing skies. We still opted to wear rain gear as the trees would be wet where we would be riding at. Saddled up and got on our way within 10 minutes.

Tammy had to model her husband's sandblaster pants....at least she stayed dry :)

1st challenge was to get Blue and AJ across the bridge over Oak Creek. It’s kind of a scary looking bridge so I opted to get off and just walk him across. Got across and back on and on to our first muddy downhill slide. Blue took it first and AJ was on his butt skiing downhill. At least this time he kept his feet together and handled it fine. Wasn’t too thrilled to have to walk through mud puddles at first though…big baby!

Pretty uneventful and I’m feeling some need for some speed. Tammy is the same way. We get to an open stretch and let them loose….14.2 mph this time, not bad for a nice warm up. Another bridge, some water crossings and rain came our way, but we were having FUN and LAUGHING!

We ride another 2 miles and decide it’s time to turn around. We had been noticing a very dark cloud coming our way and sure enough, it started pouring on us. AJ wanted to just turn around and put his butt to the wind and rain, I let him. Blue wanted to head to the trees and Tammy took him down the trail. We waited the rain out and followed it back, trying to stay behind it.

The sun came back out and things started to get a bit on the humid side. Our wet horses were starting to steam and there was a mist starting to form in the trees. Very pretty.

I started to strip off all my outer layers to stay cool. On the way back, I worked on AJ leading and crossing the bridges alone. I did have to get off and lead him across and back on the last one but he learned that it was ok to be by himself and walked back across it with no problems. He did have airplane ears listening to the rushing water underneath though.

We had to make one final water crossing before we were done. Things got a little deep on this one from the deluge of rain we just had. There was a pretty waterfall that we let the horses check out, AJ wasn’t too thrilled, Blue is a water horse and wanted to play.

We played on AJ’s ‘loping’ trail and ended up getting a video of him sliding in the mud. Too funny! Blue just slogged through it, he wasn’t afraid of getting a little mud on his belly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6ptomtP3M

Went through the mud slides again and had him walking/sliding slowly instead of plowing his way down out of control.Hit one more open stretch of trail before the trees. This is a bit of a challenging spot as there are 2 water holding ponds, ducks, geese and scary horse eating signs on the fence. Tammy asks if I’m ready and I say let’s rock and roll. Blue leads the way and I’m holding AJ back in a slower lope. I feel pretty confident in him and start opening him up to pass Blue. Blue on the other hand is telling The Kid to back off and to keep his place behind him. We are riding on Blue’s flank to the end of the stretch. We ran through mud, running water and had a BLAST. Tammy clocked us at 19.3 mph.

At that point we traded horses as I had promised her a ride on the tall legged boy. She had to STRETCH to get up in the saddle. Blue is a little shorter J I asked her if she still wanted to lope him and we loped through the trees. I heard her say he’s like riding a Cadillac. Yep, he sure is and has 4-wheel drive to boot. One more lope down the grass to the trailers and we called it a day. Almost 2.5 hours of saddle time in the rain with a good friend and awesome horses.