My trailer has been snowed in for weeks now. But, I decided I could get it out today. Actually, getting it out was not so much the worry but rather if I'd get it back in and turned around again. I decided to not think about the getting back in and just going for a beach ride. Low tide was 11:10 AM today so the plan was to be there by 10:00 AM so we'd have to leave my house around 9:00 AM. At 9:30 AM Fred woke up to the sounds of Cierra walking up on our porch. ACK! We all overslept. Even the dogs! They usually wake Fred up around 6:00 AM wanting to go out. Fred sent Cierra out to feed the horses, I jumped up, grabbed a quick cup of coffee and huffed down a bowl of cereal and went out and got the trailer hooked up. After filling hay bags and loading saddles into the trailer, and horses of course, we were on our way.
When we got to Popham Beach State Park, the gates were closed. Gurrrrrr. So, we drove down to the Fort and hoped that there would be room there to park the trailer. Much to our relief there was room for us to park there. We tacked up and headed down the path by the fort to the beach. The start of the path was bare ground but then there was snow, and more snow and we came to a spot where Marie didn't want to go any further so Cierra went by me and led the way on Tink and kept following the path trod down in the snow by walkers. Then suddenly Tinkerbell was breaking though and sinking deep and I see a s few pieces of a snow fence peaking out of the snow on my right hand side. I know that fence should be on my left side and this was not good. We were in a huge snow drift and had gone off the path out over the bank and rocks. It was tense for a moment but we managed to get turned around and out of there unharmed. Phew! We rode back to the trailer and went the short way down the road and accessed the beach by Spinney's Restaurant.
The temps today were only in the high 20's or low 30's but it was sunny and little wind so it was very nice on the beach. We walked most of the way down to the point and then went into the water there. I was in the lead and suddenly hear a loud "Tink, NO! I turned around and Tink was sitting down in the ocean getting ready to take a nice roll! Cierra caught her just before she dropped her front end into the water. It was the funniest thing. I just happened to have my camera in hand and caught a picture accidentally. When Cierra got Tink out of the water, Tink reared up twice playfully just feeling full of it. Cierra quickly got her attention and got her going down the beach and behaving. We did some trotting and cantering out to Fox Island and there we climbed up the rocks. We then rode as far as we could going west along the beach. It was well past low tide by this time we couldn't go nearly as far as we had gone the last time we'd come but in this spot we had some wind in our faces and it was chilly. We then headed back and had just the nicest ride back to the fort.
Today Cierra and I just rode from the house. That meant riding along the sides of the paved roads as there is still too much snow in the woods to go out on the trails. Marie is shedding like crazy now. We didn't originally plan a very long ride so Cierra just jumped on Tinkerbell bareback. But, as we headed down Dead River Rd. I mentioned that if we went "around the block" it would be around 7 miles. It's along some busy road but all of it has good dirt shoulder to ride on. Cierra said she wanted to do it, even though she was riding bareback. So, we decided to do it. We rode out to the end of Dead River Rd. and turned right up the Litchfield Rd. We did a little bit of trotting along here with the good shoulder but I took pity on Cierra as she was riding bareback. It started to snow before we came to the overpass. There wasn't a lot of traffic but we did have a few large vehicles pass us. A logging truck and a car trailer. But, our wonderful mares are not at all bothered by this stuff. We crossed the highway overpass with no problems. Neither horse minds crossing the overpass at all. When we got to Rt. 197, we turned right and rode the short distance to the middle school and cut through there out to the Academy Rd. and went over the interstate again on another overpass. Somewhere around the Alpaca farm, Cierra got off to walk a bit and stretch her legs. When I saw a good snowbank I could use for mounting, I asked Cierra if we could trade horses so I could ride Tinkerbell for a little bit and she agreed. Near the end of the Academy Rd. we had a large dog come out at us barking like crazy. I debated jumping off as I know if Tinkerbell did anything with me riding bareback, I'd likely come off. I asked her to stop and she did and I did not feel her tense up at all over the dog so I just sat quiet. The dog did come right up behind Tinkerbell and close enough to sniff her back legs but she stood quiet and relaxed. The dogs owner came out and got the dog immediately and was very apologetic. Again, our wonderful girls took good care of us. At the end of the road, Cierra and I switched back to our own horses and rode the rest of the way home. Even though the whole ride was along the paved roads, it was nice to get out for a decent ride. Not super long but longer than we've done in a while at a little over 8 miles. 
