In which I don't ride my butt off and Fee doesn't run her shoes off (quite)

When I look at the pictures from the Mt Adams ride last weekend, 

it seems like the ride was pretty strenuous.

My (former) favorite purple breeches

Day before the ride

I admit:  this is not an "easy" ride.  But that's not the whole story.

Here's the whole story:

I'm broke (because of the sudden death of the stupid truck) so ride-sharing was needful.  THAT was an excellent reason to team up with Kitty and Mak!

mid-trip stop for a snack and a pee break at exit 57 

They are both adorable.  Fiddle loves Mak almost as much as she loves Horus.
(picture of Fee with Horus down below, keep reading)

Mak is lovely.  He reminds me of all the things I loved about the Toad, without the fear of being boingitied into the ground at random intervals.  We ended up telling a lot of Toad Stories on this trip!  :-)

The weather forecast for the weekend was "warm and sunny."

I wrapped my hay bale in a tarp and packed my raincoat, just in case

As always, the horse camp at Mount Adams is a beautiful place to camp.

early morning sunshine

blue sky, green grass, happy Dragon

The "Comfort Station" aka temporary home for Santa Jim and me

lounging in camp, talking with friends = Best Thing

Santa Jim's "evil twin" aka AERC Prez Paul Latiolais

breakfast in camp, featuring Santa Jim's home-cured and home-smoked bacon = another Best Thing

The trails were beautiful.  Crews had a huge job to clear the winter blowdowns this year--apparently they sawed through 163 trees in a single day!

For a while, it seemed like stuff was going to fall apart.

"I could tell you how I removed my OWN SHOE while standing quietly tied to the trailer, Santa,
but then you wouldn't bring me toys in December."

Fiddle's shoe was stuck to her foot with one nail.  Gahhhhh!

we are NOT barefooters

Fortunately, somebody had LeAnn's phone number, and fortunately, LeAnn was headed towards us in her farrier truck (to mark trails for the Klickitat Trek ride two weeks hence...but the camps are only 20 miles apart).

farrier to the rescue!

We celebrated stuff.

Another anniversary of Wally's 29th birthday

Puppy

Fee flirts with Horus.  Since Horus is made of plastic, their relationship is sweet but doomed.

Ride day!

Notice that the bum portion of these purple breeches is...uhm...unbreached.  
This is the last photo of them in this condition.  Photo by Kitty

tacked up and ready to go!  (thanks for the purple hoodie, Jo! it totally matches my outfit!)  photo by Kitty

view of Mount Adams from camp

Warming up:  dressage pony

And...we're off.  (photo by Sierra)

We rode three loops with Andi and Kathy, and it was just like old times at April Daze 2015.

These ladies are a blast to ride with, and I'm lucky they let me tag along with them

We were joined by other horses and riders at various points during the ride.

Back at the vet check!

Fiddle loves Santa Jim.  He is awesome crew!  He brought un-holey breeches down to the vetcheck
so I could change into them, and he said only laughed a little bit when he got the text
that I had worn through the seat of my purple tights.

When I was out of camp, Santa crewed for Mak, too!  (photo by Kitty)

Back out on the trail.  We had four loops for the 55-miler: Snow-King, Gotchen, Morrison, Ghost. 

The "Ghost" loop is named that because of the shape of the route on a map.
As far as I could tell, it isn't very haunted.

Fiddle led the group most of the day.  

Yes:  the Dragon in front of other horses, including horses she'd never met before Saturday.
We really have come a long way, baby.

Radio checkpoint on the Gotchen loop

Sn*w on the Morrison loop.  In some places it was nearly knee-deep on the horses.

We walked a lot of the Morrison loop--in places where the sn*w was melted, the ground was slick and muddy,
or there were lots of rocks.  That left lots of time for talking and laughing.

Just because it's sunny in this photo doesn't mean we were rain-free all weekend.  We got hit with rain showers twice on the Morrison loop, and there was a really big squall that hit camp once we were all back and finished.  I'm glad I put that tarp on the hay!

The road portion of the Morrison loop:  we made tracks fast back to camp.

I needed to slow down for the final loop, because Fee's bum was getting tired and I didn't want a pull!  So we did the Ghost loop solo, walking the hills, and trotting the flats at "lip-flopping speed."

We got lapped by the 75 and 100-milers on this loop

So much pretty

Completion!

This was our first competition since 2015.  In the meantime, I had my second hip surgery and Fiddle spent a year recovering from a mysterious stifle injury.

"Fooooooooooood!"

I'd say we're doing just fine.