I had a rare treat the other day. The chance to go horseback riding with my neighbors. I love horses. When I was fourteen I had a love affair with horses and had a horse of my own: King. At that age my parents had a love affair with Colorado too, and for several years we went to a dude ranch on vacation. I don't think I ever got off the horse except for lunch (sometimes) and dinner. Ride, ride, ride. I've ridden on and off through the years, but never anything steady. Plus, since a horse tried to remove my left breast once in Amsterdam, I've been a bit head-shy of horses, which I hated. 

They trailered the horses to forest land. In the above photo, draw a straight line from the right-hand edge of the road upwards through the valley and you can see the route we took to the top for an observation point over the Laramie River Valley and back towards Bull Mountain. They loaned me a pair of cowboy boots and we saddled up. The ride went through golden aspens, little creeks and muddy bogs, to sage covered meadows. We encountered two bulls and made a wide berth around them in case they got any idea of challenging us. Big Angus bulls! The trip up was pretty much uneventul except for my saddle sliding off to the side, which was easily corrected. I think they were more concerned for me than I was about myself. I'm tough. I may not have ridden for years, but pretty much nothing fazes me.

Here are Debra and I at the top. I am riding a horse called Rawah with the Rawah mountains behind me. Debra's horse is named Rawhide and he's what is known as a smokey Palomino. I didn't get a photo of David's horse, Cash, (named after Johnny Cash with a cute story to go along with his naming) but he's a gorgeous big buttermilk buckskin. One day I hope they will let me ride him when they feel more comfortable with my riding abilities. I need to brush up, although it all felt pretty good. I felt like I really didn't find my seat until we were on the way down.

When I got off the horse I felt as if I was walking like Dick the Tree looks. From the knees down I was wobbly and weak. What a weenie. Today I am pretty good except I can feel it in my butt and thighs if I am climbing.

Here is the view from the top of the Laramie River Valley (Rick and I took a drive on that very road below us today). More aspen pics to come from that!

And the view back to Bull Mountain from the way we had come from.

We might get in another ride where Rick can join us early next week, but it all depends on the weather and the forecast is for a rainy start to the week.

Until then I have some beautiful photos to share with you. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Storm clouds on the march! These distant gray clouds lead to a half inch of rain on Sunday late afternoon. The thunderstorm just sat over us and kept reforming and reforming. It was wonderful! Not your typical Colorado afternoon thunderstorm which usually come and goes in a hurry. This one stuck around for hours. eBay opens "her" closet  (the closet where the hot water heater and furnace are housed) and hides. She is very smart. It's a bi-fold door and she sticks her paw right where the door folds and works it until she opens it. Sometimes she does this just for fun, sometimes it's just her safe place at the cabin. She's been known to do this and hide when we get ready to go back to New Jersey and gets on the side of the furnace. We have to get the broom to push her out. That is not fun.

We also had rain again on Monday morning, but not as much as the day before. Still, not typical weather.

Although it did clear up Monday evening for the "cowboy cookout" that our neighbor's invited us too. The weather was perfect. Here I am embracing my inner cowgirl while petting black barn kitty Fluffy, who is the most unshy cat I have ever seen. Thank you mom-in-law Lynn for the gift of the cowboy hat!

Overnight we had more rain and this morning a big black rain cloud dropped rain on Bull Mountain while giving us the gift of this gorgeous rainbow right out our window. It started to be a double rainbow and if you look really hard you can see them both.

What a way to start a day!

Bella loves our beaver pond. She knows exactly where she is and when we draw close to the pond on our walk, she takes off and plunges in ahead of us. The pond is really full this year. Fuller than we've seen it in many years. They've had so much rainfall this summer, which is very good! We couldn't take the same path around the pond as we usually do because it was underwater.

She doesn't swim, but she wades out as far as she can before she looses her footing. It's pretty funny to watch. She likes to stick her nose in the water and blow bubbles. Silly dog.

She found a stick floating in the water and carried it around.

Happy happy dog!

The colors at the pond are at full peak right now. 

But wading through all that deep water and marshy ground, not to mention jumping over logs while chasing squirrels is a tiring job. A girl's just gotta nap.

I was going to blog yesterday but given that we went into town for the second day in a row (highly unusual for us) it kind of ate up the day or at least a goodly portion of it.

On Friday we drove into Laramie for a provisioning trip. We left slightly before 9:00 a.m. We saw a lone coyote running across the prairie. As we rounded the corner on the main road a buck antelope was running right down the right in front of us. His lovely white rump was only a few feet away from the hood of the truck. I grabbed my camera, aimed and proceeded to click the shutter -- nothing. The darned battery was dead and I had not brought the spare with me. Duh!! He stayed in front of us for a goodly portion of the road before finally finding a spot he liked to jump the fence. It would have made for some great photos.

A little further down the road we noticed a pickup pulled over to the side of the road. We looked over in the meadow and there was a large herd of elk. One big bull and his harem of about  40 elk. Again, not a usual sight to see. Again, no photo. By this time of course, I am muttering to myself about how dumb I am.

Just before we got to the paved highway where the Laramie River crosses the road, a small herd of antelope had stopped for a drink in a section of the river that had ponded -- gorgeous reflections and all. Now I am truly kicking myself!

But I have the memories of all those encounters imprinted in my mind and maybe it's better than way.

The night before last we caught this cow moose by surprise with the game camera. And oh! I almost forgot that the day before this picture was taken we were sitting at the table eating dinner when Rick looked up and saw two moose -- one large female and a smaller one (but not a baby) -- walking through the meadow inbetween the trees. They moved so fast that there were gone before the realization that we had seen them set in. We are thinking that this moose might be the larger one that we saw.

Western clouds over the cabin.

We've been "remodeling" the inside of the cabin's living area. I was going to post that in this entry as well, but it's too much. Rick, however, did do a post with photos on his blog. You can find it here. One of the reasons why we went into Laramie again yesterday was to purchase the two bookcases we saw in Bart's Flea Market the day before. We needed to come home and see where we could fit the pieces. Brining them home sparked a "redo" of the living room area which we are really loving. We also rearranged the bedroom. We moved the Hoosier out from the wall and put it in the kitchen to break up the space and to have extra counter and storage space. So far it's working great!

The weather has been unseasonably warm since we've been here with days in the 70's and it even hit 84 degrees a couple of days ago! Last year we got snowed in. You just never know with the weather. I brought plenty of clothes for layering and have not worn a single one of them yet. The aspens change daily in all there gorgeous goldness.

I thought you might like to see how we make Cabin Coffee. It starts with this antique coffee grinder filled to the brim with rich coffee beans.

(A view of our kitchen area with the Hoosier as part of our cabin "remodel". Details coming soon!)

After 80 turns...

 the coffee is uniformly ground to this:

and percolated in my Mom's old Corningware Pecolator.

Who needs one of those grind-the-beans-brew-the coffee electricity hogs?