Saturday in the Park

Stardate 081807

Kittee and I, went into town today. There we joined in and enjoyed the annual Muddy-Frogwater Days Festival of Milton-Freewater.

I shall digress just a bit... actually we went out to the festival for awhile on Friday (see blog 081707), to see Coyote Joe and the Western Trio Band and weave around the Yantis Park activities. Coyote Joe is an acquaintance of our, a mellow voiced cowboy troubadour along with his backup band. Their music show was most enjoyable... cowboy, western, trail songs of the late 1880's - 1940's, mostly turn of the century songs and music; some older, some more recent, good cowboy music. Coyote Joe seems to be quite an historian of such music.

Back to Saturday... Kittee did a mid-morning bareback riding session with her Nugget, and I got on Justice for the first time to begin cue(s) training. Both of these rides went well just here around the ranch. The weather was mild, and clear. Afterwards we headed down for the festival to catch Coyote Joe doing cowboy story telling with song. Part of our entertainment while listening to Coyote Joe was watching this little fella -Wasn't me- and his sister running and playing around us as we sit enjoying a most pleasant Saturday afternoon. This little guy was so full of energy and go, go, go. Put a smile on our faces, mellowed our afternoon along with a large iced mug of WWWW & BV.

After Coyote Joe left the stage, we stayed on at the bandstand to watch a troupe of cloggers that came in from Walla Walla. There was 6 mostly middle aged ladies (half of their troupe, they say) that gave a fun demonstration of their clogging techniques - more Irish type clogging, than bluegrass style. Following their show we just milled around the city park grounds enjoying, watching the kids and people, having fun, relaxing. Weather is great for a Saturday in the Park- pure sunshine, mid-70's temp, light breeze.


An attorney friend of Kittee that practice here in Milton-Freewater had given us two meal tickets for the annual Festival BBQ ½ chicken dinner - that was good deed. Talking with the table waiter, he told us that the Rotary Club usually cooks about 1000 - ½ chickens for this occasion. This was quite a sight, as there were probably 8 of these chicken grilles working at the same time, and when finished it was some of the best open grilled BBQ chicken I have ever had. A job well done, and we had folks showing up for dinner and the festival from 70+ miles away.

After dinner we came home - yes, before dark as usual, and went out amongst the herd of horses and goats. As I was petting Misty she got a charged/feel good attitude and began a herd(s) stampede. We had mares running through three pastures, goats running around in one pasture, and geldings running through their pasture. Everybody was huck'n, buck'n, kick'n, except Shaiela (now in foal) and the two ponies. Misty was so charged that a number of times -maybe a half dozen- she did a rear-up and dance around on her hind feet. What a sight, what a joy. The weather was changing, to turn to rain on Sunday.

We were planning on joining a group of folks to do horseback riding along the northwest Oregon coastline today. This week we had an unexpected bill to come up, we didn't have a ranch sitter to keep the horses, so we ended up finding we had a most pleasant time just hanging around the ranch, our town. This weekend; life seems to be safe and sound living in the middle of who cares where, in this little Pacific northwest USA community- our town.
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Today, Sunday we have pouring rain at the ranch... our first one since May 2. Horses are soaked, don't seem to be very happy; our Shetland Island ponies love it.
Sunday afternoon- in the land where the skies are not cloudy all day -we sit out, enjoying the sun and watch the horses roll in mud. Evening's entertainment was watching two movies -- The Villain (you should get loaded to watch this one), and Lonesome Dove.

Dale - a day in the life at the ranch.