Now decorating our ranch with reds and gold

Stardate 101407

Yesterday with one of our horse owner/boarders - Kasey, Kittee and I rode the 10 mile loop of our local back country harvest roads/ rough trails that circles us high above Crouse Creek Canyon, around Lincton Mountain, and back to the ranch. We found this ride to be so beautiful that we had to do it again today, taking pictures.

It is hard to tell you here of the exhilaration of this weekend's rides, but I will try to share today's ride with you... cool autumn breezes, bright warm sunshine, clear blue skies, splashes of foliage color like blazing fires, hound dogs howling/chasing raccoons - spooking our horses, on and on... "A picture is worth a thousand words." So we will just share some pictures with you and hope it will bring you closer to the happenings around our ranch today.













This time of year the hunters are out, so we wear red as does the shades of the sumac foliage. This morning we had a horse spook episode, on Misty and Nugget that included a quarter mile run down the road with horses' heads high. It was not one of those turn on a dime and flee spooks, as we felt the horses getting nervous. We heard the dogs coming from a quarter of a mile away, with some crashing through the woods, but it still made a thrilling, fast ride to start the day. A good test for stay-in-the-saddle horsemanship... you know you just can't get a Sunday ride with an adrenalin rush like this, by sitting back on a bench seat with a wheel in your hands or watching TCM. After this episode the horses settled down, and we had a most enjoyable late morning ride out from the ranch for a couple of miles back up Cashe Hollow.
When we got to the top of the first long grade we rested in the shade of the walnut grove, enjoyed the great outdoors, then turn around and headed back for the ranch, the horses always know the way home...

Getting back to the ranch, it was after beer-thirty so we took a short break, to wet our whistles, wash down the trail dust and had a bite of lunch.











Right after lunch we began working with some more horses, as Kittee began with washing Derby's tail and prepping him for an afternoon photo opt session.

After Derby's tail washing, he and Justice had a photo session in the beautiful afternoon sun and then we took them out to pasture and arena to be horses.







Derby here on the left and Justice below.









Handsome group of fellas here, don't you think?

Derby making one of his best
Quarter Horse poses.

Justice and I squint with the wind in our eyes as we are working to stay ahead of the arena track dust.

Justice and I still have quite a bit of training work to do, before he is ready for the trail next year.

Kittee also took Derby for a ride around the back pasture, and a few nice fast cantering laps in the arena. After Kittee put Derby back out to pasture, she caught-up her Shaiela, groomed her, and did some bareback cantering on her around the back pasture and arena.
After Justice's workout everyone was ready to call it a day, we treated all the horses that had given us a ride with a spot of grain, and just kicked back and relaxed watching the geldings and goats feed on their evening hay rations and plums.After feeding the gelding herd, we moved up to the behind-the-house-yard and threw plums out into the pasture, and hand fed plums to the mare herd. Again Sheila proved herself to be the alpha mare/witch even being pregnant as she is.

So all in all we had another wonderful full two and a half day weekend of beautiful October weather, horseback riding, and polished off the weekend only using 6 horsepower of energy for three days. Oh the joy of riding around side-by-side with the wife on back country roads with responsive steering in our hands, fine leather seating under us, open roof above us, and cool fresh air on the face. In three days of riding we met a total of 3 vehicles on our northeast Oregon back roads.

By late afternoon, riding in the country all weekend we felt a need for aspirin and a drink of WWWW&BV, but these are the kind of aches that feel good. We know they are from a good weekend workout, and riding the back countryside with smiles on our faces.

Hope you will join us here sometime in beautiful October to ride together in our country RED's and gold.If you are not into horseback riding around our ranch country, we invite you to just come join us, enjoy our ranch setting, have a cup of tea, or sit back with a beer, or maybe we could just go to Walla Walla and visit a few of the 64 world class wineries and tasting rooms for a day. Yep, those folks on the Washington side of our river valley are becoming Californicated. Come any weekend and just relax, leave the driving to us.
Gitty-up.

Dale --- another weekend in the life at McKuster Ranch