Celebrating Kittee's 47th... ?

Today was Kittee's birthday and she took the day off for for us to go for a ride. It made a most perfect birthday for Kittee and I. We started the day with our favorite ranch breakfast of fresh brewed McKuster Ranch strong black coffee, Apple Bread-French Toast and a large pattie of sausage. A great Oregon rancher's breakfast, much like dessert.

Right after breakfast we made a quick getaway from the table, dropped out dishes in the kitchen sink, went out the back door, loaded up the horse trailer, with tack, snacks, Derby and Nugget. The weather this day was cool; morning lows in the 50's, afternoon high in low-80's as compared to this past weekend's -4th of July- 100° days. After loading our stuff and horses we made a big U-turn in the driveway and headed upriver for the South Fork trail. After saddling up at riverside, we headed up the trail, with the river sparkling and the air rather crisp and clean, for our morning ride. Gee, this felt good. We made our way upriver through about six river fords when we decided this felt so good that we would have to do this again on Friday, (a story to be continued).

The ride went very smoothly, with no rattlesnakes or wasp encounters. When we made our upriver turn around Derby knew the way back to the trailer so he led the way stepping out quite briskly. Derby has a 1/16 Thoroughbred in his Poco Bueno pedigree, which gives him a smooth, fast ride on the trails. During this day's ride we encountered two couples hiking, and three guys mountain biking on the trail, the rest of the mileage/great outdoors we had to ourselves.


After we returned to the trailer, we gave the boys some river watering, a bag of hay, and we sit back and had a couple of beers to wash down the trail dust. While kicking back our ole riding buddy George Ehmer came riding by on an Appy, as he was finishing his mid-day ride up the river. Under both of George's shoulders were .45 revolvers and a Camelback water bag on his back... he was ready for anything... that's George.

Sitting by the river in the shade of the cottonwood trees, with our palomino amigos felt so good, that we were really getting psyched on doing this again for another round of outdoor relaxation on Friday.
By the time we got back to the ranch it was about 3 o'clock, so instead of having lunch I made a quick snack of smoked Oregon Spring Chinook with cheese crackers and a beer. That held us over well until dinner time at Kelly's.

While eating dinner at Kelly's we had the next door Posse Grounds' family night horse activities to watch. A very relaxing outing and view with our Blue Mountains as a backdrop.

After dinner we came home for a 6:00 pm appointment and watched horses... Goldie, Summer, Derby and Nugget until sunset and then got ready to call it a day. But then we remembered that Travis (our horses' trainer) had made Kittee a birthday cake. So after a long day of fun and run, we sit down for a piece (or few) of chocolate cake and milk.

Mmmmmm good!! I had told Travis about how old Kittee was to be this day, but he forgot and instead of making a wrong guess, he chose her to be 47 today.

And that's the way it was, a wonderful Birthday in the saddle ---- Dale