Happy New Year's Eve

 

This is what bad weather looks like in this neck of the woods.  Every morning when we wake up this is the first view we see.  Lucky us!  As we end another year, I give thanks for all our blessings.

 

 Every decision we make affects the path we take, how we affect others and whether we influence others for the good or the bad. 

 Thank you God for all the blessings we have, those we realize and those we don't.

To all our family and friends; this is the prayer I pray for all of you every day.  Heavenly Father;  Please watch over all our friends and family today, bless the marriages, the kids and all the animals. Thank you for all our blessings, those we know and those we don't realize. amen.
Happy New Year to all!

Maryjean

Waiting for the vet to come and do chiropractic work on the horses and look at MaryJean.  She has been sick on and off for the last 3 weeks.  Lucky for us our hometown Vet Dr. Tim is here visiting his other home and agreed to come and see us!  Only high in the 50's today and sadly we have become acclimated to this place and think that is really really cold!  Sheesh.

Merry After Christmas everyone

Sitting here in the quiet of the moonlit night remembering Christmas' of the past.  What they say is true that you can never go home again but you sure can remember the one that made that day special for my first 36 years.  She was faithful to the tradition of spoiling us all at Christmas and worked at it pretty much all year long.  It didn't matter to her that we were all grown adults, when Christmas came around we were all just kids again in her eyes and we really felt her motherly love.  So this Christmas and for the last 10 years I have missed that feeling that she gave us.  Nothing can fill that void and maybe nothing should.

Coming home

 

 

The ride down the mountain was beautiful.  Our horses were amazing since it was straight downhill for 3 miles.  We were all glad to get back to the water hole and then back to the cabin.  Margie and I shared a toddy as I celebrated not falling off the trail and all of us making it safely to the cabin.  We had an interesting dinner of leftover steak and freeze dried dinners, yum.

   

 

 
I thought these trees were beautiful, bleached white over time, I wondered why they grow in a spiral?

 

 

 
Here our story jumps from our descent off the mountain to the last water hole before home.  We rode about 8 hours the last day and it was a long way betweeen water holes. (about 5 hours)  Our ponies were all glad to see this cow waterer about 45 minutes from Dorly's.  The only thing I didn't photograph on the last day was a huge spider, my first sighting of a live taranchela (sp?)  I thought wow I should get a picture of that, then decided EWWWWWWW I don't want a picture of a giant icky spider so you will just have to take my word on that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was great to get home that night, take care of the horses and give them a proper meal, all they could eat!  It was a great adventure!  I went to bed at 7pm and slept until 6am.  Haven't been that tired in  a long while!

We made it to the top!

 

Horses were so glad to see the top and this easy mile of pavement into town.  We were able to water them at a stream right in town then tie up in an empty lot walking distance to the Cookie Shack.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Greg, Margie's husband.  He got talked into driving up here with a bale of hay to help us feed the horses.  He's a super great guy!

 
This is Margie's sweet baby Gypsey.  Very glad to see her Mom but kinda mad at her at first for leaving for a couple of days.

 
Darn, this store was closed so we didn't get to load up on chocolate.  I knew I would need chocolate and a  lot of it to make it back down that mountain.  Sheesh.

 Our ponies, first time ever:  Too tired to eat.

 Yeah, the cookie cabin is open and we went in and ordered a pizza.  People were staring at our crazy outfits but we didn't care.

 

 
See how happy we were waiting for pizza!

 
Still sleeping....We had to wake them up to get going.  I felt bad about that.

 

 

Heading back down

 

 

Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Still more pack trip

 

 

 

Morning 1 at the camp.  Horses getting brushed and fed.

People drinking coffee and trying to get fed.

 This is the WORST food ever, freeze-dried Huevos Rancheros.  Yes it looks like throw up and no we didn't eat it.

 This is how you get fresh drinking water from an icky stream.  A water filter operated by a handy pump into Bobe's 1 gallon canteen and all our water bottles.  It was really good water if you didn't think about where it came from.

 Making the 5 mile trek from the cabin to the top to SummerHaven.  It was very steep and the first 3.1 miles took us 2-1/2 hours stopping to let the horses rest about every 5 minutes.

Getting up there now!

 This is the observatory

 Sad to see the fire's devastation.

 Tomorrow we will make it to the top.

More Pack Trip

 

So I have been told that there aren't any pictures of the 2nd half of the first day. It was pointed out that it looks like we go from Charleau Gap Road and then BING we are at the cabin. The reason for this is because when you get to the end of the Road we turned left into a wash filled with rocks and boulders and Al says "OK you guys have to find the trail" since we were in front. It was all we could do to pick our way through there, Terry in the lead using all his hound-dog sense to find the way. We did find the way eventually even with the millions of cow trails going off in every direction. After we left the first watering spot, about 1 hour into the trip we went 6 more hours looking for the first water spot. If there was not water at a certain point we would have had to turn around and go back. We had some mighty thirsty ponies when we finally found water. We continued up to the hikers cabin around 4pm after stopping one more time for water.

 

 

 

 

 Got camp set up and dinner cooking

 Yum, steaks on the fire!

 

 The horses are picketed just below the cabin

 

 Kitchen inside cabin stocked with lots of cookery and some food for emergency use

 Margies bed, that white cover is some kind of really loud plastic that crinkles like crazy when a person rolls around on it.  Al slept on the floor with his head in the doorway. Ouch

My bed on left, that yellow thing, Terry slept on floor next to me. Ouch.  His bed was atop of some nailed down tin that made a god-awful noise everytime he rolled over, not kidding just ask Margie.  Now if this cabin was in Michigan it would have had a serious gross-out factor because it would smell musty but not in AZ.  This cabin was clean and smelled just like a spring day! It was very class with it's stained glass window and crystal chandalier that you can't see.

 Good Morning Margie!

 Bobe isn't looking too happy

Al up and out already.

Stay tuned for more...