Happy trails

Max and Me; he's eating grass can't pose for a picture

Seward, Alaska, is about 500 miles from home.  It's on the coast of Alaska amongst beautiful mountains, lush green with glaciers and bits of snow still visible from town.  Sea otters frolic, seagulls abound, cormorants dive down for a fish lunch and porpoise leap in the bay.  It's a great place for salmon fishing but that's not on the agenda during this visit.  We're going on a horse back ride.  This sounds fun!

My sister, Marcy, has gone riding with this company two other times.  She tells me the lead horse is named Max.  He's 1700 pounds of horse, part draft horse, absolutely a gorgeous animal.  The trail guide is a tiny woman who rides Max.  She carries a .457 in case a grizzly stops by for a visit during the ride.  However, Marcy tells me, the gun has never been needed because Max has no problem taking on a grizzly.  In fact, he's trained to do so;  he's huge and kicks at the bears.  The bears leave.  Hmm, okay.  I'd love to see a grizzly!  Preferably on the far side of the bay or field or as a speck on the mountainside though.  Or a postcard.  That works, too.

We arrive at the corral at 2:30pm, rides begin at 3pm.  We check in and sign the waiver of liability.  There's also a helmet waiver to sign if you so desire.  For those of you who know me, it's a given that I did NOT waive the helmet.  For those of you who don't know me,  I have had six concussions in my life and don't take chances with my noggin meeting the ground or other hard objects.  There's enough loopiness upstairs here and I prefer to remain status quo.

Our trail guide is Mariah.  She asks who's been on horses before.  A couple hands go up including mine.  She asks how many times we've each ridden or how much experience we have.  Well, heck, I'm a seasoned veteran at this horse riding stuff!  Truly I am.  I always choose the black horse with his head held high as he trots around, jumping up and down as the music plays.  The wind whirls past as I reach for the brass ring.  You have to lean off the horse to do that you know.  Skill I tell you.  Skill.  Really,  I've got the carousel thing down pat.  Haven't been thrown from one yet.  Real, live horses though?  One ride under my belt in my entire life.  Rather sad actually.  So experience?  None.

Okay now we're each given our horse assignments.  I get up onto my horse, Gus, with no problem.  Didn't even need a step stool.  Only problem is the stirrups which are already at their shortest point are too long for my short legs to reach.  Mariah assigns me to a different horse named Max.  Max?!  Mariah tells me he's very docile, knows the trail and is very easy to handle. Uh huh, okay.  Naturally I take her word for this because I know for liability reasons she'll not allow an inexperienced rider on a crazy horse.  In the back of my mind, I'm remembering what Marcy told me about Max.  Paula in nature translates to bear bait, right?  Oh well, live it up I say.  Standing beside Max it appears the stirrups hang just below shoulder height to me.  Step stool please.  This should be interesting.

About twenty minutes into the ride, I realize I forgot something very important back at the camper.  My bike riding shorts.  You know the ones with the padded butt.  Because right about now I'm wondering how the hell anyone can do this for any length of time.  It's gonna be a race to the ice packs when we're done two hours from now.  The only other physical problem is human knees are not meant to be in this splayed position for any length of time.   Aye sheewawah!  Ouch.

Max knows the trail all right and requires no steering at all.  This is easy.  We're in the forest and I'm ducking under branches, leaning back when we go downhill and forward when we go uphill.  It's gorgeous out here.  Kawam!  Knee meet tree, tree meet knee.  Okay now I'll remember to steer this humongous horse whose girth is wider than the trail especially when in the heavily forested area.  Dang trees don't move when you run into them.  Eeeesh!

We cross a creek and the river a couple times and come out onto the flats near the ocean.  From here you can see the only building to survive the earthquake of 1964 in Seward.  The ground dropped 10' in this area after the quake.  Mind boggling to think of that kind of power and the changes that occurred in just a few minutes.  As we go across the sea grass, Max breaks into a trot.  Oh, God, I'm gonna die!  Fairbanks woman last seen running into Pacific Ocean on a black horse....story at 11.   Just a slight pull on the reins brings him back to walking.  Whew, one crisis averted!  He knows we'll be stopping soon so he and his equine buddies can snack on the grass.  That's why he sped up.  Good thing there's grass around because he's already bitten the butt of the horse in front of us twice!

military building survived earthquake of 1964

 We cross the river a couple more times.  Mariah points out bear scat along the shore as we cross.  Looks old, that's good.  Looking for bear tracks I find several sets at different points along the way.  Pretty sure they don't look too recent.  Yeah, I'm sticking with that thought because I actually don't know if they're old or new.  Several minutes later we're on black sandy ground and there two different sets of moose tracks.  Okay, dinner for the bear whose tracks we saw earlier, right?

bald eagle nest, approximately 1000 pounds; see the eagle chick

The bear tracks, eagles, 1000 pound eagle nest and beautiful scenery distract me from the discomforts of my knees and bottom.  I can see the corral once again.  This ride has been wonderful but I'm ready to get out of the saddle, stand up on solid ground.  I never thought the sight of a step stool would be so welcome.  Mariah says the stool is wobbly and to be careful.  I can guarantee my knees are more wobbly and my backside isn't sure what to think of this whole adventure.  I now know why cowboys walk the way they do.

My niece, Naomai; my sister, Marcy; moi