Rockin the City of Rocks

The hot temps of day 2 I knew had taken a lot out of Thunder. He wasn't tired but even though he is a big red bugger sometimes I still don't want to hurt my horse. But his appetite was good all night and he was raring to go in the morning. There was no way this boy was going to be camp lizard!

My friend Trish Frahm wanted to ride Blue on Day 3 and I figured the "two boys" would enjoy the trail together. Steve Bradley got a great shot of us on the trail! We came into the vet check near Twin Sisters when Colleen who was riding the 25 miler had only 9 minutes left, and we managed to keep her out of the boys sight so not one nicker was heard! Rushcreek Hollie looked great and CM gave me a thumbs up. They went on to finish 3rd in 2:51!! Woohoo!! And another great shot by Steve Bradley!

The route took us on some gravel roads but at least we could usually find a nearby cow trail. The Teeter crew had hauled LOTS of water and the horses stayed tanked up in the cooler weather than day 2.

It's always fun to stop and read the historical signs along the way!

And the zillions of rock spires and towers could resemble anything you wanted them to be, this one was an eagle.

This day we were 11th and 12th in 6:22. Both horses passed the post ride with flying colors!! Thunder now had 3 days completed. Now we were committed and had to ride just one more to be a 4 day horse! The morning of the final day there were only three four-day horses starting. Thunder had roughly a 7 hour lead over the other four-day horses, all we had to do was finish! The final trail had changed due to a fire on Wednesday and also there were predicted thunder storms for the afternoon. Steph was keeping us down low and out of the mountains for safety. I don't like dodging lightening bolts so I wanted to be done as early as I could get it! The trail was pretty easy and 20 miles to the vet check at Elephant Rock. We had a nice meadow with lots of grass and a grand view of more rock formations than one could ever imagine!

I was riding with Donna Thibadeu-Kelly and the Carol Brand caught up with us a bit later by Pinnacle Pass. We cruised on around the flats and made the loop down to Utah one more time. A few miles from camp it started to rain and the sky rumbled a bit. It was time to step it up and head for home! With 2.7 miles to go we met Merri Melde on the four wheeler. She was shooting some video and somewhere in that is a great shot of the three of us with a big lightening bolt behind us! Merri said "See ya!" and took off on the four wheeler as a big old crack of thunder boomed overhead. Yeah well we weren't far behind her! As we got close to camp we slowed the horses down so they could finish cool and not have to wait to pulse down for the vet check. Good plan only no sooner did we finish than the heavens boomed followed by a torrent of rain and everyone ran for cover!!

We finished 7th in 5:25 and I showed him for Best Condition. His vet score was the high score of the day with 417.5 but we were almost an hour behind the horse that got BC, Phinneas, so the time factor hurt us. But I was still very happy with my boy and a high vet score! The only four day horse in the bunch to show for BC too! Our total time for four days and 200 miles was 26 hrs and 41 minutes. This was Thunder's third complete multi-day and he is a lot more fun to ride on multi-days than just one day because he does settle down. :) Yup he is the rockstar!!