In which plans are useful so there is something to scrunch and throw away

My plan yesterday was to take Fee out for some solo miles:  lots of single track, lots of tricky trail, just a long quiet ride on a rare sunny day.

When I got to the trailhead, Connie and Farah were there...

Farah is registered as an "American Warmblood":
she is arab/saddlebred + appaloosa!

 and they were waiting for Amanda and Cato.  

Amanda is my height; Cato is 4 inches taller than Fiddle!

 We started out separately

 but early-on, Cato was NQR--maybe a muscle-pull from a slip in the mud last week?  Anyhow, Amanda opted to walk back to the trailhead

Canada in the distance; the San Juan Islands a little closer in.

 and Connie and Farah joined up with me!

Sweet, pretty, and level-headed = my favorite kind of horse

 We had a wonderful ride.  The trails are still slick in places, but Farah is still young and green and needed practice with that kind of thing, so that's what we did.  

On a sidehill, overlooking Puget Sound

 No rushing at all, just chattering and meandering along and taking pictures of the blue sky, the wildflowers, and this fellow:

Yearling blacktail buck

I think this little spike-buck just got tossed out of the family home, and was feeling lonely 

because he certainly didn't mind being close to us!

 This was actually the second blacktail deer I'd seen in a day--the first came into the orchard in our front yard around 6am.  Jim woke me up to see that one. He was looking straight into the bedroom window from a distance of about 20 feet!

Looking east, Mt Washington at photo-right.

We wandered up to the top of the ridge to admire the view...

Lake Goodwin below

 ...and then, we explored some new trails back down the hill to the trailhead.

A good horse and a long trail ahead = nothing better in the world.

What a great day!