Day 2: June 18, 2000
Our first day riding (at Laramie River Ranch)

We woke to the sounds of people talking at normal volume around 6:15am. I guess people just assume it's an early rising kind of place. I slept for another half hour but then got up so we'd both have enough time to shower before breakfast at 7:30. We headed down to breakfast around then, and they had quite the spread. They had all kinds of cold cereal and yogurt and juices, and then you could order eggs and toast or pancakes. Walendo and I both ate pretty light. Before eating, I met Jeff, who is a professional photographer and is here to take photos of the place and he'll also go on the rides. He said he's gradually built up a specialty of going to ranches to take photos, which is a nice way to make a living, since he gets to participate as well. Walendo had met him last night and he'd said I should feel free to pick his brain about photography, so maybe I'll do that.

View of Corral from the Lodge

At 8:30 we all met at the corral for some instruction from Rollie. While he was talking it started raining, which was a bit of a bummer. He told us we should make friends with the horse and let it know we're not going to eat it, since after all, we're carnivores and they're herbivores. We shouldn't get too close to another horse, watching to see if their ears go back to tell if they're feeling threatened. And if your horse bolts away from something, you should let it go for a bit to get away from whatever spooked it and then firmly stop it. Then he showed us neck reining, where you move the reins in either direction to steer the horse, or direct reining, where you pull one side of the reins out to turn the horse's nose in that direction. By the time he was done, it had stopped raining and the sun was coming out. They helped us all mount our horses and we went out on the trail.

Walendo on Cheyenne

Walendo and I went with Skye, one of the four wranglers, and the couple Chris and Jim. My horse, Flax, seemed pretty cooperative and would go where I asked him, though he had a fairly slow gait so he'd fall back after a while. Jim was on Dusty, whom they said didn't like to get too close to other horses, and he kept drifting back last. Jim was funny; he kept trying to get his horse to go up front, urging it to "win the race," but clearly the horse just wanted to be in back away from the other horses; poor guy. Walendo's horse, Cheyenne (a big light brown & white horse, called a "paint" horse, a term we liked) seemed to like to be up front behind the leader, so Walendo and I couldn't walk together that much. Walendo would try to swing back and join me, but then in no time, he'd be back up front again and I'd be near the back. I actually was happy to be back a bit, since I didn't like riding so close to the horse in front. Jim seemed more interested in birding and fishing and wasn't that into the riding. I think Chris likes to ride more. Jim pointed out a bunch of the birds we saw, though, so that was nice.

Ellen on Flax

The scenery was really beautiful. By now the sun was out, there were bright puffy clouds in the sky, and as we rode, we went up higher so we could see the many rolling hills in all directions. It's really nice land, very peaceful. A lot of wide open land of rolling hills with sage brush and small desert plants. It's not really spectacular, but it's very pretty. It gives me a wide-open spaces type of happiness. I didn't bring my camera, since I figured I should focus on riding at first, but I noted a few places where I'd like to go back later.

Skye told us a bunch about the area and just generally chatted with us. She was very nice, I liked her quite a bit. She told us the names of the nearby mountains and hills, and pointed out interesting things along the way. We saw a herd of antelope over a hill, though they all bounced away when they saw us. Skye asked about us and we about her. This is her second summer working here, and she just graduated from college in Ohio. She said she's going to work a few years and then maybe go back to grad school in something like wildlife biology. I wish her luck.

We mostly walked the whole way, but sometimes the horses would trot to catch up. I liked trotting but I wasn't very good at matching the horses gait. I also felt like my stirrups were too low or something because I wasn't able to push against them to brace myself. I knew I was supposed to push my heels down, but then I didn't have any slack. I figured later on I'd ask them to raise them up a notch. Also, after we'd gone out about half way and had started our wide turn back toward the ranch, all the horses kept veering directly toward the ranch -- they knew exactly where it was. Those horses are no dummies. We had to keep steering them back to go the way Skye was taking us. When we were getting close to the ranch, Cody (the ranch dog) appeared and joined us on the way back. It was fairly far out -- I thought it was nice how Cody just roamed the ranch and met the horses like that. She seemed happy to see us. By the end, I didn't want to trot anymore because all I was doing was bouncing up and down on the saddle, ouch. My thighs were fine, but by the end, my calves were really hurting from twisting in and from pointing my toes to reach the stirrups. I was glad to be back when we got there.

As we headed in for lunch, I thought part of the problem might have been that my boots had those high heels, so the angle of the sole pushed my toes down and made it harder for me to push my heels down. So I went to get the other boots that had sort-of fit. They had a normal heel, but they were wider and so had less support. I figured I'd try them. For lunch, they served us split pea soup with a nice salad and delicious bread. It was a perfect amount of food, and very good. They also had a sweet pear dessert or ice cream. I tasted Walendo's pear and it was quite good. At lunch I chatted a little with Cheryl, who had ridden with her beginner friends for the morning. It sounded like she was eager to get out riding for real. She and Rollie (at the other end of the table) talked about horses and such, how they get stolen sometimes, and how mares are a pain because of their cycle.

For the afternoon, Walendo and I signed up for beginner instruction. Most everyone else went out on another ride, which surprised me because there are a lot of beginners, but I guess people just want to ride. As it turned out, we didn't get a whole lot of instruction. Miah (short for Jeremiah) was our instructor. We went into the arena, and he put out some cones for us to weave through, which we both did just fine, if a bit slowly. But then Cheyene seemed reluctant to move at all, and Walendo didn't want to push him. I was trying to learn to trot, and he told me a few things that helped, though I didn't think I was getting it. At one point, he noticed that I wasn't going up at the right time, so he called out "up-down" at the right times, and that helped a lot. For a few paces, I got the feel of it and it felt good. He said I'd been going up early and then the horse would meet me on my way down, and so I kept getting bumped. I wanted to keep trying so I could get a better feel for it, but Flax wasn't being that cooperative. It was hard to get the horses to go around the arena in a circle, they kept turning back to the exit. It was pretty clear they didn't want to be in the arena.

Finally we decided to go out on the trail, since Miah said they'd be more cooperative out there. They don't like the arena because they associate it with lame riders who don't know what they're doing -- not like us of course. We walked out a ways, with Flax at his slow gait. It had rained a bit in the arena, but now it was clear again, if a bit windy. Finally he said we could try trotting again -- they're not supposed to trot until you get far enough away from the ranch. They want to train the horses to walk near the ranch so they don't take off to get home with an inexperienced rider on them. We trotted what seemed like a ways and I still had trouble getting the right rhythm -- maybe I had it a split second and then I'd lose it. I finally stopped for a rest, and would have liked to try again, but Miah suggested we go back and Walendo said he was ready too. I was also pretty sore and wished we could have just tried trotting without all the walking, but so be it. We turned around and I saw we'd hardly trotted at all! Oy vey. As we headed back, I was feeling pretty sore in the legs, both the inner thighs and the calves. I didn't even encourage my horse to trot to catch up, because on short trots I never get the right rhythm and all the bouncing was hurting. We probably shouldn't have pushed it, but what are you going to do.

We got back to the ranch and it felt great to get off the horses. I'm sure they were delighted to have us off their backs too. We hobbled our way back to our room, both struggling with the stairs and laughing at ourselves. We got back to the room about 3:45pm and we've been relaxing here since, about 2 hours. Walendo took a nap and is now reading, and I've been writing up this report. We missed the instruction on horse care (grooming, saddling, bridling, etc) which is a shame, I wanted to learn about that, but I just didn't feel like going out and walking. :-) It started to rain pretty heavily, and now it feels cosy to be here in our sweet little room.

Dinner in a little over an hour, and then apparently we listen to cowboy songs.

...

Eating in Dining Room

Dinner was once again very good. We had fish and rice pilaf and a delicious almond and lemon cream pastry. We sat with the English sisters again and we also met a couple from Miami, Monty and Toni, who had been here a little over a week. They had apparently started out as beginners and now they were going on advanced rides, so that was encouraging to me. While I was chatting with Vicky & Penny again, I overheard Walendo talking with Monty about Siggraph. He apparently is doing some sort of startup with computer graphics, small world. We even chatted about computers a bit with the Vicky and Penny. It sounded like they did some great riding. I told them about my troubles picking up trotting and Penny said I should let the horse throw me up rather than trying to sit up. I laughed and said I let the horse throw me up plenty! I also asked if they thought I should sit out the morning if my thighs were hurting and they said no I should keep riding. Okay.

After dinner, Chad, the ranch's naturalist, played his guitar and sang a bunch of cowboy songs. He told some stories about the songs, which was good, and even told a few cowboy jokes. It was really nice to listen to the songs, most of them had interesting lyrics. My back was a bit achy, so I stood much of the time. Little by little, people got up and left to go to sleep and he kept playing till there was hardly anyone left. At first I thought it would be rude to leave, but apparently he figured it was his job to get everyone tired enough to go to bed until everyone was gone. We were one of the last ones to go.

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