Riding Horses with the Batty's

The last weekend in September our good neighbors the Batty’s (who live 2 houses down from us) invited us up Payson canyon to go camping and horseback riding with them. I was all over the idea but when I checked the weather – it was supposed to rain all of Friday evening! Therefore, I opted to stay home in my own bed for the night where I could get a good nights sleep and then figured we’d head up Saturday morning (when the weather was supposed to be nicer).

Adam and the kids, however, were too excited to wait until Saturday morning and so they decided to drive up after dinner and dishes (just before 8pm). They hurried and hitched up the trailer, grabbed some sleeping bags and pillows, and were off!

I enjoyed a nice quiet relaxing night at home where I watched episodes of Once Upon a Time and read in my “To the Rescue” book written about the life of President Monson.

The next morning I slept in until 9 am, did some housework, and then made up a big fruit salad, avenger salad, and snacks for us all to eat during the day and then headed up the canyon to meet up with Adam and the kids. The drive up the canyon was BEAUTIFUL, clear, sunny and perfect! I enjoyed listening to soft classical instrumental music on the way up and contemplating life. 🙂

I arrived up at camp around 11:30 am and enjoyed meeting Cari and Justin’s friends Christine and Cameron and their two beautiful girls and catching up with Cari and Justin. Then it was time to go and see the horses! Carie and Justin had brought up 5 horses (Charlie, Pep, Mahamad, and I forget the other two names) who were beautiful and funny enough actually belong to the Girl Scouts of America. However, Justin’s Dad takes care of the horses and since the season for riding horses is over for the girl scouts, Justin and Cari were able to borrow them for this trip! It was awesome!

So after a quick lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fresh peaches from our tree, we got the horses all saddled and ready to go for riding!

Adam ended up riding with Adalynn and Harry, while I took Dawson and Branson rode with Treighton on his own horse (which was led by Justin). Then Cari took Daxton on with her and whala! All of us got to go on a ride together!

This little girl LOVED being on the horse and kept telling Adam “Daddy this fun!”

Justin led us out on a trail just west of camp that took us in a big circle around the area.

We had to stop often to let the horses graze….or better yet the horses MADE US stop often so they could graze. It became the running joke that my horse Charlie had more control over me than I him. He just wanted to sit and eat all the grass rather than actually keep following his friends. We finally worked out a deal by the end of the ride that if I let him stop for grass, than he had to trot to catch up with everyone else. It actually was super fun! Dawson would just giggle and giggle every time he started to trot.

The colors of the trees were so pretty!

Later that afternoon all the girls took another ride out together to see another canyon nearby. It was just Cari, Christine and I along with Christines daughter Maja. I loved getting a second chance riding a horse but this time I opted to take Pep – who wasn’t nearly as distracted by tall yummy grass. He did a much better job keeping up with the others.