Homeschooling, Horses & Motocross: Iceland! The trip begins

The trip began with a short orientation on learning about the Icelandic horses. It's one of the purest breeds in the world since NO other horses have been allowed to be important since around 1000 ad. They are considered horses but are more large pony sized and are just simply "pleasant" horses to be around; very happy and curious with no natural predators.

Our first ride out the weather was a bit iffy. We really couldn't decide on rain gear or not. I obviously chose to wear my jacket but had my pants rolled up with Jill's on the back of my horse. The rain gear was that heavy rubber stuff that is also very windproof which wasn't always a bad thing. The pants were hard to ride in though. Under this rain coat I had a thin zip shirt, a fleece shirt and a jacket. I also had my waist pack that you can see in front of me in purple. Most days I didn't need much of what was in it but almost every day I needed SOMEthing that was in there and passed out plenty of ibuprofen and Aleve each day.

Later in the day we got some heavier rain and we all had on full rain gear. While it was wet, it wasn't all that windy or cold so it was bearable.

The vistas were amazing even with the low hanging clouds. The pictures just don't do it justice.

Occasionally we came to sections of the trail that were just too steep or rocky to ride on so we'd dismount to walk the horses down. And sometimes we'd get REALLY spread out in the process.

Other times we were dismounted to walk the horses through trails so tight between huge boulders that it was amazing that anyone had ever found the path in the first place.

I was completely amazed at how sure footed these little horses were over some of the incredibly rough terrain we rode on. Carefully look at these rocks. I can't even SEE a place to put my foot yet these little guys just scrambled right on through like nobody's business.

I haven't yet mentioned our group of Wild Women. Fabulous. There were 14 of us plus the two guides who I'll speak more to later. The youngest was 24 and was there with her mom. The oldest was 65 and was probably the wildest of us all. We had some that owned their own horses and rode regularly and some that had taken a few lessons and there they were. Everyone was there for their own reasons and came from all over the USA and Canada. Amazingly, there were 4 of us from SE Michigan!