When possible I always try to go for a horseback trail ride when on vacation. In recent years I have done so in Costa Rica, Iceland, South Dakota, and even Rhode Island. During my last two visits to AZ, I rode in the South Mountain reserve but this time I picked a place on the northern edge of Scottsdale. NONE of my relatives was available or desired to join me (Alex rode with me in Iceland but I guess they don’t enjoy it as much as me).
After we watched another perfect sunrise from our room’s patio, Alex and I went down the smaller of the two pools. It still had a 25-yard place for me to swim and it had a nice jacuzzi as well. I only swam for 20 minutes and then soaked in the jacuzzi for a while with Alex. I did a lot of stretching as well because, in the last few years, I have found it very hard on my inflexible hips when I am on a horse for too long. I joke that I need a VERY skinny horse. I was hoping I would be more comfortable this year as I have been going to StretchLab every other week and trying to do more Yoga.
Alex got this nice photo of me in my “Cowboy” outfit 🙂
I got a new HiTops4Haiti shirt on Sunday.
https://www.instagram.com/c4c_haiti
They are SUCH beautiful animals. One of the reasons I do not eat mammals.
The stables were on the edge of a national forest, part of the Sonoran Desert. A wonderful place to spend Earth Day, 2024. Last years I was in Central Park, NYC with Alex.
I was the “most” experienced rider of our small group of tourists (one teen had never been on a horse other than a pony at a long-ago birthday party) so I got to ride behind our guide.
My horse, Dylan (they were all gelding quarterhorses), was very easy to ride. I only had to use the reins to “steer” him once or twice and rarely to discourage him from snacking on bushes. He was easy to speed up with my boots or slow down with the reins. The goal was to be able to see the feet of the horse in front of me.
It was very peaceful in the desert. The ride was from 9 to 10:30. It was a comfortable temperature at the start but towards the end, it was past 90 degrees and I would have needed a second water bottle if we were out there much longer. When we stopped we could hear the wind rustling the leaves on the vegetation. There was a huge variety of plants and as it was spring there were flowers and a lot of greenery that would all be dried out in a few months.
The guide didn’t give too much information but she mentioned the huge variety of plants, animals, and climates and described how each Saguaro cactus was its own small ecosystem, with insects, animals, and other plants depending on it. We saw owl holes in many cacti.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Sonoran-Desert
We saw 2 rattlesnakes (maybe 5 or 6 feet long), they were quiet and the horses ignored them. They are so well camouflaged for the desert that it is hard to see them well even in my photos.
We also saw many small birds (including the crested quails) and some tiny ground squirrels. I had asked the guide “what are the hamster-sized” rodents.?” They moved around quickly and I couldn’t get any photos from horseback.
I ran my Garmin watch on “hiking” just to get a track of where we went. We only covered 4 miles in the 90 minutes so no farther than I could have hiked but more relaxing and a better view from atop Dylan.
Alex had gone for lunch in Old Town Scottsdale with my cousins L and J and I went for a well-needed deep-tissue massage.
We GrubHubed for dinner and watched our current joint streaming show on Hulu.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1710308/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
The moon rising in the east and the sun setting in the west!
Alex had a red-eye back to NYC so I dropped them at the airport at 8 pm.