Friday, August 7, 2009

Pictures

This is The Mare. She's a Beligan/QH cross of an indeterminate age who is the best husband horse I have found. At some point she was well trained and will collect, sidepass, turn on the forehand and haunches. But only if you know what you are doing. Otherwise she will amble along the trail, going where you point her with no fuss. She has even carried the little yappy terrier dogs across the river. She has been used as a "packer" horse on a dude string here in Alaska and nothing much bothers her. She is fun to ride. When we canter I feel like I should be wearing armor and carrying a jousting pole!


I came across this picture while I was cleaing crap off the computer. This is my front yard. It's an 80 acre hay field and those are the Talkeetna Mountains. That's the moon rising about 4 pm several winters ago. See the snow fencing in the front? We used to put up 12 rows of 20' long fencing in the field. The driveway runs right along that field and the wind whips out of the mountains, picks up the snow and dumps it on the driveway. The first winter I lived here there was a 21' tall snow drift at the end of my driveway. In January of 09 we had 70 mile an hour winds and we spent 6 hours with 2 plow trucks and 2 skid steers trying to keep the driveway open.
These bald eagles are lurking behind the fire station in Eagle River waiting for the garbage to be thrown in the dumpster. I used to think eagles were these great, magnificent, mystical creatures until I saw them dumpster diving. It's still pretty cool to see them but give me a murder of ravens any day.

This is the view to the east from the Alaska State Fairgrounds. When the mountains turn pink from the reflection of the sunset it's called alpenglow. It's prettier and more dramatic when there is snow on the mountains but I though this was a cool picture.

Lots of stuff going on here but not much time to sit at the computer. I have a post started about my favorite saddle and will try to get that finished this week. State Fair opens in about three weeks and I have sheep and goats entered in the Open shows and my daughter has a market lamb in the 4-H shows. In addition our 4-H club does the big petting zoo so we will both be working every day of the fair. My biggest gripe is that school starts before the Fair. It's a hardship on the kids and parents. That's one reason my daughter is home schooled.

I'm going riding........

3 comments:

  1. AKPony, OMG, your Mare is a spitting image of our "Baby!" And sounds like a lot of the same personality! "Otherwise she will amble along the trail, going where you point her with no fuss." That describes our Baby to a tee! Here is the story on our draft, Baby. http://horsetrailriders.blogspot.com/2008/11/raising-baby.html
    Someday she will have a job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alpenglow...would that apply to the same scenario in the high desert of Oregon? We never get to see a sunset because of the 600 ft hill behind us. But, we always get to see the shadow of the hill creep up Hat Butte as the sun goes down.

    The Mare is quite a girl! I imagine that she can pack about anything for her size. I love that type of horse too. Our mustang, Coyote, is that way.

    The mountain shot with the moon is spectacular. Keep those pics coming...I love seeing them!

    ReplyDelete
  3. gtyyup - It's been such a long time since I've been in the high desert but I think it's the same. My sunsets also blocked from view at home. That line of mountains runs east-west from my place and the sun (this time of year) goes down at the far west end of it. If I'm in town though I can see the sun set all the way to the horizon.

    ReplyDelete