Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A dream fulfilled

A momentary break from the Gabe files:

The girls and I visited my mom and stepdad in their beautiful California cabin this summer...10 days of pure bliss! We spent four of those days in the mountains, camping with the horses and trail riding. It has always been a dream of mine to ride in the mountains and I can now say it was everything I had hoped it would be and more. Kayleigh had a blast and led a few of our trail rides. I was a little concerned about her on some of the steeper trails as we don't really have many places in the Midwest that make the horses sit on their butts on the way down! I shouldn't have worried...she rode 'em like a pro.
My mom and Kayleigh, leading the way. We were camping near Truckee, Calif., which is pretty near where the infamous Donner party engaged in cannibalism.
Kayleigh absolutely loved being our trail boss. See her new chinks? She LOVES them! While we were out and about in the mountains they got a few scratches from the trees. She came up with a great story to tell back at camp about how a mountain lion jumped out and attacked her, the chinks protected her and Cheyenne (her horse) galloped up the mountain to save her life. She's quite the storyteller.
The views were incredible. My mom kept apologizing for the skies being so smoky from all the wildfires, but they looked pretty darn clear and blue to me. Guess I'm so used to the humidity haze around here those California mountains skies were stunning.
At the top. Amazing, isn't it? Not a soul or a bit of civilization in sight. LOVE IT!
The view I woke to every morning on that camping trip. I could live with a view like that for the rest of my life.

3 comments:

  1. This is beautiful country, you lucky dog! I grew up riding trails up here in the northwest and have traveled through Nevada enough to know that i would like to ride the trails.

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  2. It was wonderful. Beautiful, inspiring and magnificent. I don't know that I could actually live there, though. Visit, ride and camp, absolutely. LOVED IT! But, I was starting to feel a bit "closed in" by the mountains by the end of the trip. It's hard to explain, but I really missed the wide open spaces we have out here.

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  3. That's a really pretty area. I actually used to work in Truckee.

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