Mare Tongues and Sand dollars

Cierra and I made plans to go riding at Popham beach today. The weather report was for temps only in the 30's  so we knew it would be a cold day but we decided to brave it and go anyway. Low tide was 11:30 (ish) AM. so we planned to leave my house by 9:30 AM. I worked last night and got home at 7:45. I went out to feed the horses as soon as I got home and Cierra arrived just as I was heading back in to the house. Her mom had brought me a mint hot chocolate from D&D sweet woman that she is. Cierra headed out to the barn and cleaned out stalls while I had a quick breakfast. It was indeed cold out and we knew we might be crazy going to the beach today but we were still determined to go. Cierra has only had Tinkerbell to the beach once and that was last year. It was a short night time moon light ride and Cierra had never asked Tinkerbell to go into the water. Cierra was excited about seeing how Tinkerbell would do today.

We loaded the girls into the trailer and headed out. Once there we were delighted to find it was definitely warmer than it had been at my house. It was a sunny day and a very comfortable temperature at the beach. Tinkerbell and Marie were very quiet and relaxed while being tacked up. I led the way down to the beach and Tinkerbell stayed relaxed. Tink only got a little excited when she saw another horse down on the beach. But, she quickly settled down again. In a very short time, we were riding in the waves. Tink was wonderful about it and very brave. She is such a good horse. We went straight out from the beach access and rode that point and played on the rocks. The went to the right of the access and rode quite a way in that direction. The sand was great today and the beach was very wide everywhere. We did some nice long trots on this side of the beach. There were a lot of sand dollars on the beach today. I don't often see them at Popham so I stopped and picked a few up. We then headed down to the fort. We did a very nice long relaxed canter along this stretch of the beach. I was so pleased with Marie's stamina and energy level. After all, she is 23 but she was feeling good today. We rode around the fort and then on the way back we did another long canter but really let the girls stretch their legs. We rode part way back out to the rocks to let the girls cool down slowly. It was a great ride.