Our afternoon excursion was a horseback ride. It was a quick 15 minute ride to the stables where we were trained / reminded on how to ride a horse. It had been 40 years or so since I had last been on a horse. So those 5 minutes of reminder was needed. Leslie's horse was named tequila and mine was named Sopapilla. Sopapilla is an Italian pastry so I may have been more hungry than attentive. The horses were quite large so I did not have to worry about my size. The head Gaucho got me on a horse first, Leslie second and then he indicated the order that we should be riding. Not that that lasted long but we rode single file out through a field. We crossed a road, then a shallow stream and then we approached the confluence of two rather large rivers. I was concerned that we were going to have to cross one of these but it was our photo opportunity spot. They lined us up and then Marielle took my camera to get the pictures you see in this post. Tequila wanted to eat the grass and for some reason this type of grass was no good for these horses. So between smiling for the pictures and keeping the horse from eating it was a workout! We turned around and started heading back. They warned us that the horses know that they are heading back to the stables so we needed to hold on to the reigns firmly. The order we were supposed to follow broke down immediately on the return trip. I was running fourth for a while and then made it up to third. Not that it was a race but I was just following directions. At one point the first two got way ahead of me and my horse started to canter. This is the point that I realized that saddles are not padded. We went through a muddy lake on the way back and I had to prod my horse a bit. Luckily my size 15 feet did the trick and we got back to the stables. It was just over 2 miles of riding and that was enough for both of us.
Lenticular clouds are associated with mountains and sometimes look like a mushroom cloud or a UFO
Head Gaucho, leading the way
A bit windy but still the landscape was beautuful
Marielle off the trail!
Pulling up the rear
The clous is morphing into the mother ship
This is the river I was worried that we were going to have to cross
But is was just a photo opportunity
We had our raincoats on to block the 30 mph winds
A nice looking couple at photo stop #2
Love the layers!
