The Summer of Noda Nuff

Oh Fall is almost here officially (and actually probably arrived a week ago in Wyoming as the cottonwoods are starting to turn) and this was certainly the Summer of Not Enough of

Time to Work with green horses

Camping on the Mountain

Or sitting around enjoying a campfire

Or Riding

Petting the new foals

And definitely Not Enough S'Mores

 or

Playing with the granddaughter!

And Definitely Too Much of

Slaving over a hot stove (campfires not included!)

Housework (need I say More????)

and WORK!!! Definitely too much.

Therefore I am officially putting 2011 on Notice that there will be More Camping, Riding, Petting the 2010 foals, S'mores and Granddaughter!  Housework, cooking and my job will be put on hold indefinitely or until I am a)broke and b)conditions become too unsanitary or c)hungry.!!!!!

I KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!

Sometimes Camping is just exhausting!

Aunt L Was there when I woke up.  I really like my Aunt L.  She's a Real Cowgirl.

And Nana had a New Helmet and New Boots Ready!

 

Hey Nana! It Fits!  Now Where's the Boots?

 

Okay, got the boots on but I'm still a tad tired.

 

But I perked right up when Dad showed up with a horse.  Daddy took me for a short ride. It was scary at first, but I wanted to do it.   The very first thing I said the next morning to my Daddy was Ride the Horse! 

 

And I wasn't scared at all.  I liked it...a Lot!

Grandpa rode Ratchet and Daddy & I rode Fizz. Charlie the Schnauzer went too!

I did other fun stuff too, like swinging in the swing Grandpa put up for me in the tree.

Digging in the dirt was a hit too.

 And what's camping without s'mores????

Yeah Horse Patch Camp was a lot of fun.  But how did Nana know I about ready to ride a horse? (Hey, Nana's been down this road with quite a few kids, she knew.)

And now a word from Nana.  Horses are big AND scarey.  Never force a child to ride a horse.  They have to want to do it. And please please never put your child on a horse - ANY horse without a properly fitted equestrian helmet.  Head injuries are the #1 serious injury from horseback riding. I know, the old photos of my kids-no helmets.  But now I am older and wiser plus the helmets are more available, better built and reasonably priced.
My granddaughter's helmet was a small dial-a-fit.  Don't put your child on a horse with dangling jewelry, tied hood strings or anything that can hang up on the saddle and prevent them from getting off if they need to in an emergency.  Don't put laced up boots on them, slip on type ropers are the best so small feet can fall out. 
Never let your small child walk up to a horse alone and NEVER let them walk behind a horse.   

Make Safety a Priority -- and Now Let's Go Ride!

Where Did all This Stuff Come From?

Oh man, I'm right in the middle of a huge project -- cleaning out an garage that was full of stuff for the last ten years since we moved out to North of Nowhere.  And now I ask myself, what was I thinking??? Keeping all THIS STUFF????  I mean really, I thought I was going to USE a corn cutter that is still in the package after ten years.  Right.  I can not even GROW corn because the water out in North of Nowhere won't grow squat, it has too much sulfate.  And a rusty teapot, oh now that was something certainly worth packing around and taking up space for ten years. 

But then I discovered the gems,  the 4 x 6" and 4 x 4" gems and some 8 x 10" gems........................

Someone said, don't go through the pictures...you'll never get done.  But the pictures are mixed in with all the other stuff so I HAVE to go through them and now tonight I'm feeling nostaglic......I miss my little cowboys I think, empty nest syndrome or something.  HA

Here's #1 Son, myself and my childhood Pony in 1978.

 

#1 Son Wrangling in Yellowstone National Park in 1996.

Kids, this one was for you.  So you don't have to clean out all that crap after I'm gone like your Dad & I did for Grandpa, Nanny & Auntie the last few years.....oh right, that's where all this stuff came from!  Well maybe not all of it.  

Where did the time go?  And how did I get this old????  That's the real question............

Cowboy Stuft.....

 

Love Daughter In Law's Palm Hat in this Picture!

 

Backside of Muddy Mountain looking over some Big Country!

I cannot believe it's almost August and we have been so busy we haven't even gone up to the mountain to ride yet this summer.  Bummer.  But it was such a wet year that it was not good riding until July so I guess we really only missed three weeks so far.  Boy there has been a LOT of rain this year.  The grass is up over the fences on the highway right of way.  Son #2 and his wife have been up and gotten in some good rides. 

Hubby told me a story about Horse Whisperin' the other night that left me grinning.   He has two friends who are brothers.  Several years ago the younger brother, Clyde was into the Horse Whisperin' techniques and had gone to several of Top Notch Trainer Bucky Duckette seminars.  Well Clyde also had a young horse at the time who he was breaking using his new-fangled techniques.  Fred, the older of the two, has fantastic horse pens and a old-style round pen with solid wooden sides.  So Clyde hauled Young Horse over to Fred's place.

They put Young Horse in the round pen and saddled him up.  Clyde told Fred that the main problem with Young Horse was he bucked when you kicked him into a lope.  "He doesn't know how to lope, that's the problem.  He don't know how so he bucks." Fred believes Clyde was quoting a seminar instructor from somewhere.

Clyde gets on the horse and reaches over, and with a FLOURISH, takes the bridle OFF!!  (Just like the Horse Whisperin' Instructor!) And kicks Young Horse into a lope (well a buck at first) and gets him going without bucking.  Then Young Horse starts gaining speed and pretty soon he's lapping the round pen about three boards up like a motorcycle in a velocipede!

Fred  reported with glee, that Clyde on that darn horse looked just like a Monkey on a Border Collie!!!    But you know what?  That horse never bucked going into a lope again and Clyde had him until he was an old, old horse!

 

Whiplash the Monkey

Click on Whip's name above to visit him!

One of my favorite things has always been watching my husband work a horse.  His dad broke horses in the military prior to WWII for the cavalry, and an old cowboy named Hap Sankey gave my husband some horse breaking lessons also.  Hubby's techniques are military/old cowboy with some of his own techniques thrown in. Hubby has passed all this down to the boys.  Now Hubby has sworn he was too old to break horses and the boys need to do it now.  But the boys are pretty busy this summer so.....

Foot tied up, saddled.

Releasing the hind foot.

Starting to Ground Drive the horse

Going good in this photo, horse is allowing Hubby to be behind him.

Starting to Unsaddle, End of Session

Hubby always tries very hard to end with a positive for the horse. 

Since I last posted, we had one of these .................

 

Merci had a Buckskin filly on July 14th!  Isn't she cute!  We are going to name her AFS Ryder High Brida.  In our neck of the woods there was a fine lady named Brida Gafford who had been a World Champion Bronc Rider back in the 1920's and had traveled with the 101 Ranch.  You can read her story here.  Since the sire of this Morgan filly was a cremello Morgan named BDM Border Ryder the name made sense.  Well to us anyway!

The mares & babies are out on the pasture now.  I went out to take some pictures but they didn't want me to get close, the stinkers.  

And that's the news this week from North of Nowhere!

My Beach Sunburn! Ocean at Shelter Cove!

Black Beach, Shelter Cove, California

 

Warning Sign on Black Beach

This is DEFINITELY bigger than a horse trough!!  This is Black Beach near Shelter Cove and the beach was all this black gravel/rock.  Near the water is was smaller but never sand grain size and then became larger up towards the shore.  It was deep and hard to walk in.  Warning signs were posted all over about the dangerous rip tides and to stay out of the water.  Sadly, my friend told me, people ignore the warnings and there are several drownings every year on this beach.

 We had my friend's Patterdale terrier with us and she found a place to cool off at Black Beach in a small fresh water creek that ran to the ocean.

 

People on the beach at Shelter Cove

We then drove south to this beach but I don't recall it's name.  It's the cove part of the shoreline and here people were swimming and sailing.

Just beyond the rocks you can see a sailboat in the distance from the shore at the cove.

 

We had lunch at this nice cafe with a patio overlooking the ocean.  I had fish and chips.  Is there anything else to order for lunch on your day at the Beach?  The seagulls were very experienced scavengers at this place; they perched on the roof just waiting for you to drop something.

Seal Beach

After lunch we went over to Seal Beach where we saw.........(drumroll) SEALS!  They are kinda like rock slugs. Not much action there.  This beach had California sea lions.  The males were huge and one male wanted to go back in the water so he inched down and then waited for wave action to lift him off.  It must be very hard for them to navigate around on the rocks.

A view of some of the homes in Shelter Cove.

While at this point of the beach we could hear all this commotion.  It was the bird above, and another one who were doing some sort of ritual thing.  Maybe a mating dance? Or mating shout-out would have been more like it.  We watched them for quite some time.

This was my last day in California and I got sunburned!  So when I got back to Wyoming I made SURE to tell everyone I got the sunburn at the beach!  LOL.

It was a wonderful trip with a great traveling partner, and I saw many of my good friends and visited their farms and horses, and basked in their wonderful hospitality.  Thanks to all of you.  YOU ROCK!

(In fact, we had such a great trip for 2011 we are planning on riding the Amtrak Coast Starlight, probably south from Sacramento!)

And now back to my regular rambling blog.  Hope y'all enjoyed the trip.

The Awesome Redwoods, Ferndale and Best Road Trip Ever!

Today we are going to the Humbolt State Redwood Park and it is IMPRESSIVE.  One of the things I discovered is there is so much canopy overhead that photos do not really come out well, but a photo cannot really do justice to these magnificent trees.

 

The Eel River on the drive up to Humbolt State Park

I asked my friend why it was called the Eel and she said she thought it used to actually have eels in it.  This river flash flooded in the 1960's and wiped out small towns located near the park.  What was amazing was how high the water must have been to have gotten up to those points!  Signs were along the roadways warning we were in a flood area.

 

A Flood Warning Sign

My photos of the Redwoods are poor quality.  Stupidly, I had left my wonderful digital camera on my table back home.  So I grabbed some "Fun Savers" but found out by the time I paid to develop these poor photos I could have purchased an inexpensive digital camera for about the same amount of money.  I did discover the HD Fun Savers took much better pictures but could not find them in Redway.

 

A fallen Redwood at the Park Entrance

Redwoods only exist in a 45 x 250 mile long swath along the Coast of California.  They need certain climatic conditions to exist and one of those is fog.  They do not have deep root systems and gather most of their moisture from fog.  Because their root systems are shallow and they live in a fairly wet zone, they are prone to falling over from wind and other factors.  Can you imagine one of these giants falling?  The largest redwood ever recorded  was in the Humbolt State Park and it fell sometime in the 1990's I believe.  They could hear it for over a mile and it was so loud they thought there had been a train crash.  Another tree had fallen and had hit it on the way down.

 

A View of the Canopy

  

Forest Floor in the Redwoods showing the Ferns

 Small Redwood is growing out of the burl on the roots of the mature tree on the left.

I know now why there are preservationists who want to preserve the old growth forests, particularly old growth Redwood. Out of 1.8 million acres of  original redwood forests less than 82,000 acres of old growth remains!  It is spectacular with a very primordial feel.  Redwoods existed in the time of the dinosaur and the old tree I mentioned above that fell was a small burl redwood when Christ was born!  

And as I said my photos are poor and really do not do justice to these magnificent trees.  While we were walking through the redwoods I decided I needed a pine cone to add to my trip scrapbook.  I could not see a single one.  Finally my friend asked what I was looking at.  She bent down and brushed through the undergrowth for a minute and handed me one.  Turned out the Largest Trees I've ever seen have the smallest pine cones I've ever seen - the size of a grape!  Well it fits into my scrapbook much better than one 2 feet long! 

The next day we did a road trip, making a loop first to Ferndale and then down a small highway that ran along the coast for quite a ways, through some really nice ranching country, and back through the forest to Home Base.

Ferndale had a lot of old dairy farms (and some current ones) and the town itself has preserved a lot of their Victorian structures along with the pioneer history.

Ferndale Mansion

 

Home in Ferndale

 

View of street and Church in Ferndale

Ferndale has quite a few shops that specialize in 'yesteryear' goods.  What I learned is that quite a few people are making a living off of stuff that I threw out years ago!!  We ate lunch that had a small little cafe in the back of their second-hand craft/art store and then went for our road trip down the coast.

 

First Glimpse of the Ocean as the highway drops off the cliffs down to seaside.  It was a pretty big thrill for a Wyoming Girl to whom the phrase 'body of water' means a horse tank!

 

Ocean view from the Highway.  Interesting Large rock in Ocean don't you think? 

Once we dropped down on the highway, we had high hills to our left and the ocean to the right.  Every so many feet there would be a sign that said WARNING! Tsunami Area!  You can see one of those in this photo.  Cattle were grazing on the hills to our left which was a surprise to me, that they would have pastures right up to the ocean's edge.

 

Now we are coming back up the hills above the 

Tsunami areas.  Here is an old corral sitting above the Ocean.

Cattle grazing in the hills.  I just loved this area of California.   It was pretty remote and was full of ranches and the kids all must belong to 4-H because I saw a lot of 4-H signs just like you see in most rural areas of Wyoming (I spent 14 straight years the last week of August in a camper at the Wyoming State Fair.  I have been bitten, kicked, and peed on by every type of 4-H/FFA project imaginable).  These ranches were pretty remote and the towns were very small, maybe 150 to 300 people.  I could easily move here and feel right at home!

 

This is where we dropped down into a valley to a little town called Petrolia.

Petrolia is the site were one of the first oil wells in the United States was located back in the 1860's.  They had a sign up pointing out that fact. 

 

This sign commemorated the old Pioneer Cemetery at Petrolia. It said it was about four miles south of here and sounded like it would have been a very interesting place to walk through.  We are 30 miles from Ferndale and this is the first town we have seen, very small.

 

As we drove further, the countryside began to change.  It became drier and more open.  Here is a shot of some horses grazing.  I'm not sure what is on the fence post but I think it is a pair of gloves.  Perhaps left behind accidentally while fixing fence.

 

What in the World?  A short ways down from the horses we saw this! A ZEBRA!  Now don't you wonder how in the world this zebra got to this place in Calfornia and why?  A mystery not to be solved!

I think the whole drive down the coast was about 60 miles or so and in that drive we only saw about 2 small towns.  Some tucked in valleys between the mountains that looked very "Vermont" like you see in pictures of that area.  Just Lovely and I enjoyed every minute of it.  It is filed in my Memory Bank Under "Best Road Trip Ever!"

Next blog - My day at Shelter Cove and the Beach