A couple weeks ago my friend and I were talking about adventures of an evening.  Would you believe the very next day we were on an adventure together?

One of the horses at camp had a foal very early the next morning.  This was good except that our horses run free on 200 acres of land or so every night and are rounded up every morning.  Part of that land is across a decent sized creek which rises with the tide every day.  You guessed it, the baby made her appearance on the other side of said creek.

So, mother horse and baby horse were kind of stuck over there until we could get them to the creek bank and the tide was out so the creek was low enough for someone to carry the foal across.  The water is very cold and rather swift -- too scary for a newborn to cross by herself.

Anyway, our adventure...we took some hay and grain out to the mare and lunch to the wrangler staying out there with them and we did it bareback both on one horse!  We went slowly but what a sight we must have made crossing the creek with the two of us trying to keep our feet out of the water and the food dry, etc. 

We made it just fine.  This was the first time I had ever seen a newborn horse.  She was so sweet and the mare, who was a first time mommy, was so nurturing.  We hung around for a while and tried to get them to move closer to the creek.  We got a little way along but the rest of the herd decided to check out the new girl which put progress on hold.

My friend Letty and I needed to get back to camp so the next part of our adventure was to find a way for both of us to get up on Cedar (our ride for the day).  She gave me a leg up but then how to get her back on?  We eventually found an old log on the ground that was just high enough for her to get on behind me.  Then it was a matter of getting the horse to sidle up to that log...

Now this was getting better all the time.  I was not the horse person.  Letty was.  I can ride but I am no expert by any means.  Now I was riding bareback for the first time, with someone behind me and the horse DID NOT want to leave the rest of the herd.  We finally got him going in the right direction but by this time the creek was too high to cross at the normal place.  We had to go farther upstream to get across.   Not a problem except I dropped the blanket we had taken out to warm the foal.

Down Letty got and retrieved the blanket.  But how to get her back up again?  We walked a while until there was a little mound of grass for her to step up on.  Again the horse begrudgingly sidled up to allow Letty to climb aboard.

We crossed the river just fine but a bit after that there was nothing we could do to avoid a pretty steep incline.  Thankfully we made it up.  It was steep.  We made it a little closer to camp when we came to a pretty steep gully.  Then we walked along it to a place where we could turn to go down and up again on the other side.  The horse decided to go sideways down the hill!  I am not kidding.  I didn't even know they could do that.  We nearly fell off while I was desperately trying to direct him to turn down the hill.  It was steep. 

With thankful hearts we came into view of the barn and dock where we load and unload horses.  While the horse was walking down the "road" to the dock I was thankful to be about to get off.  What I didn't realize was that this particular horse doesn't like the great big mud puddle that covered the entire road shortly before the dock area.  He kept going left.  I kept thinking he was choosing to walk right alongside the great big mound of snow on the left.  He kept going left.  I started directing him right.  He kept going left.  He decided to walk right up on the great big pile of snow!  So we had one last adventure getting back down off of that snow without falling off again!  Good grief!

Next time, I stay in the back where I belong! By the way, my very own husband went across the creek with his duck waders on and carried the filly, now called Ginger, back across so she and the mare could go to the barn together.  What a day.