Cowboy Take Me Away

Friday evening we (Travis and I) headed to McCall with our good friends Jamie and Becky - no kids this time!  They were celebrating their 10th Anniversary and we just had our 5th in June and we didn't really celebrate, so we kind of were celebrating both of them this weekend.  Jamie had surprised Becky with the trip and luckily she wasn't disappointed that we were going with them.  We checked into our motel in McCall, then went to dinner at The Mill followed by a couple of drinks and games of shuffleboard at Beside the Mill (no kidding, that's what it's called and it is literally beside The Mill.  We got up 'early' yesterday morning for our 2 hour car ride to Deadwood Outfitters to go on our FOUR hour trail ride.  I've been on a horse only a handful of times in my life and though I wasn't really nervous, I wasn't really excited for it either (not as excited as Becky anyway - ha ha).We got all 'saddled up' (as they would say) and ready to ride up to a little lake.  Most of the ride was fairly flat and easy, then there was a part where we wound up the side of a mountain and at one point I made the mistake of looking at where we had come from a realized it was pretty much straight down.  Then we got to the top and had to go down the other side to get to the lake only we didn't so much wind down, rather we went straight down.  I thought for sure we were all going to just slide right down hitting the horse and rider in front of us and end up in one giant horse/person pile at the bottom.  I decided at that point to just trust 'Tiny' and I literally closed my eyes as we finished going down the hill as if I was on a roller coaster not a horse.  Side note: Tiny was NOT tiny.  Think a man with the nickname Tiny and you probably picture one of the biggest men you've ever seen...same thing with this horse I was on.

We took a much needed, little break at the lake, had a drink and some snacks that the guide brought for us.  My knee was killing me and I could barely walk, but within 5 minutes or so it was just fine.  My ankle, which I was most concerned about, thankfully never hurt at all.

The entire trip as a whole was an absolute blast and hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do it again sometime.  Travis thinks we need to make it a tradition for the 4 of us to go yearly so we shall see!  I'll post pictures of the rest of the trip at another time, so stay tuned!