Big Adventure part 5

With the sun shining bright and needing to get on the road for home, we had no excuses to drag our feet in the morning.  After helping to feed all the horses, EG got out her own dressage saddle and tacked up Mata Hari for ride #2.  She stands so nice and quiet...and is just a fuzzy bear with her winter coat right now!

 After following the routine from the day before, they hit the rail for a repeat of lots of walking followed by a good amount of trotting.

 Near the beginning of the ride, Mata Hari decided to spook at some rustling leaves and took off towards the top of the pasture closer to the other horses.  It wasn't much of a run, EG was easily able to half halt her knowing she would stop at the top of the hill and the fence. And then they went right back to work.

To end the "lesson" and at Clarissa's suggestion, they tried a canter.  Knowing Mata Hari would prefer to canter towards the other horses, they took the same route as she had gone with the spook.  Clarissa got this great departure shot while I was doing the video.  All went well and we called it a morning!  At his point, we pretty much knew we wanted to bring her home and had discussed some of the logistics but we were leaving the final decision open until Equestrian Girl and I had time to have a serious talk on the 6 hour drive home.  This was going to be a big move and we had to be sure. 

 We packed up the car and gave hugs goodbye to our new-old friends!  It had been a super exciting little trip and we were looking forward to the great weather for driving home.  

The view below is part of Clarissa's pastures in the middle.  It's so beautiful there but sooooo remote!  As I navigated us back down the mountain (I still had 3 weeks until my hair got colored again - I couldn't afford any more gray hair), I had EG take these pictures.  

There is a pipeline going in over the mountain behind Clarissa's farm.  While it doesn't go through her property, it does cross the creek that is on her property so they will be doing some work at her farm next year that will include making it safer for her horses.  While it cuts a big swath through the trees, they are replanting what they've tore up and trying to return as much to nature as they can.

And then we crossed back into Ohio (Why doesn't this side say Welcome to Ohio?) and had the long drive back to Michigan.