Website - Spring Riding - Skeeter - Moose - Trail Maintenance

I know that I have been absent more than a bit for the last few weeks - but I have gotten a LOT accomplished!

The big announcement is that we have our NEW website active and live on the internet!!!.  Look for us at www.AllensparkLodgeBnB.com.  We had to establish a new domain name so we just added bnb to the end of our old site.  Long story short:  our webmaster of 13 years took ill and sort of faded out of existence. (He has since been located, but is fighting for his life against cancer and cannot handle the business right now.)  In the meantime, we were notified by the hosting company that our domain name had expired and they were less than helpful in getting the situation taken care of.  It would have taken a minimum of 80 days to get the situation under control, and feeling that we could not go the entire summer without a website, we started from scratch - purchasing a new domain name, registering with a host, and developing our own website.  So, please take a look and let me know if you see anything that you think could be improved or 'fixed'.  We are still adding options, but it is up and running!

Now that I can break away from the evil computer - that I swore to never be a slave to again when we moved up here - the weather has also finally cooperated and we have done a few short rides - and not along the road between snow drifts, although those were fun, too.

Look!  A lack of snow.  OK, I cheated.  This was taken the day before the last 30" of snow we got nine days ago.  But still, no winter coat and a ball cap.  Now that's wishful thinking for spring.

Then our daughter's newly adopted BLM mustang was delivered.  Meet Miss Skeeter Bang.

She is a four year old mare from the Canon City training facility; technically "unhandled".  She was on the wait list to go into their training program, but she chose our daughter instead.  Look at that blaze.  I believe it's been called a profile of a unicorn - and I totally agree.  Don't ask GunDiva what she calls it; she has taught tooooo many med/sex ed classes.

 GunDiva was hoping she was a dark bay, but I think she is a true black - and a gorgeous one at that.

She was so unconcerned about all the goings on and people around her, that she had her official 'ribbon cutting' that same day.

Two days ago, we took the boys and headed up the mountain to check the trails.  Most of the snow was gone already.

 

No green showing on the aspens yet, but the water is starting to flow.  We were going out bareback so we opted to just mentally mark the spots that needed the first of the trail work.  Things like this where debris just needed moving.

The upper trails looked pretty good...

 ...even with Ranger's cute ears.

We spotted 10 deer in four different groups.  They all looked pretty young.

Washoe and I had to have a few discussions about how he was not going to spend all of our ride-time with his head in the grass!

Not all of the trails looked quite that good.  We didn't have pictures turn out of the washed out areas, but planned on improving them.

Our youngest granddaughter, Asset, will be 'stepping up' to first grade next year, so her school is having a stepping-up-celebration this Thursday.  Her family all came up yesterday to bake tie-dye cupcakes for the fun times.  We made Bill a mini-loaf cake with the leftover batter - but this is what the cupcakes looked like.

Afterward, we all went hiking.  The kids chose the Allenspark Trailhead.

We hadn't gone very far when the trail looked like this.  I guess we won't be riding on this one for a few days yet.  Then last night, Compass called to say she had two moose wandering among her wrangler cabins.  We hurried over....

Mama and young one; probably the same one spotted late last summer as a new born.

We had set aside today to do some major riding and trail maintenance.  This meant saddles and everybody got to go.  We had only been out about 45 minutes when we had our first excitement:  more moose.  A couple crossed the trail ahead of us and headed up a small meadow to the next hilltop.  At first it looked like our mom-kid pair, but as we watched them it became obvious the 'kid' wasn't such a kid.  They both looked like young males just starting to get their racks.  Then the horses got a whiff of them and the cameras got put away, so sorry, now pics.  We opted to go the opposite direction and started up an old, unused trail that looked promising.  Almost at the top of the hill, I spotted barbed wire crossing the trail and down among the trees, so we 'parked the horses' and removed that.  They are quite patient at this stuff.

I would love to try a ride-and-tie, but I am afraid either of these two alone would uproot whatever tree they were at - but they do know trail maintenance.  After we came off that hill, we rewarded them with a picnic.

We soon started our way back by way of the trail that needed most of the water work.

Bill took care of that in short order and we spent the rest of the way picking up trash that the wind had blown in.  It's a good thing that I decided to do this blog tonight.  When I wanted pictures, we couldn't find Bill's camera.  It soon became apparent it had been dropped on the way home.  We headed out hiking - on foot, no less - and luckily found it right where we thought it had dropped out of his pocket, not too far away.  He had been wrestling with a fairly large piece of cardboard stuck under a stump.  It never would have been seen again.
Bionic Cowgirl