A great ride on "Zeke"

Since I ride my old Sizzle several times a week, I seldom seek out opportunities to ride "strange" horses when I'm away from home. Frankly, I'm cautious about horses I don't know, plus I get to ride as much as I want at home. But Amanda and I had great treat when we took a trail ride together at Sun Mountain Lodge. I could see I've really been missing something. It's just plain fun to do something new with a different horse.

I was just interested in a quiet ride to look at the scenery, but since I'm more experienced than the average dude, they gave me a relatively young, but very well-behaved half "draft" horse named "Zeke." All I can say is it was fun and he was BIG! There were only four of us on the ride, so I followed Kit the wrangler and we had a great time talking about horses and wildlife.
The scenery was spectacular and for almost 2 hours we rode through valleys and forests, past lakes and streams then climbed high on a ridge for fabulous views of the North Cascades. I could have kept going forever on Zeke!
We saw unusual birds like the Western tanager and osprey, and a carpet of wildflowers were blooming all along the trails. Amanda enjoyed a little "away from baby" time. Kit invited me to go out for a private ride with her the next time, so "we could really cover some ground." Oh boy, sign me up!