well we had a nice breeze saturday for hauling hay...

And she had sold out her field and would not have had hay to pickup today, plus it got hot pretty darn early so I guess things worked out pretty well. We should have stopped after getting the first trailer load though. It was such nice hay and Pam's mom had not charged us the extra for the certified hay and she fills out a form. So we went back for a second load. The bales that made it home from that load are going to be rather pricey per bale. We were all tired and hungry and when the trailer whipped around for bit heading home (it was dark because we had hung out chatting with Pam) there was various whining about 'what the heck, why isn't this pulling nice' but we just kept on. When I got the gate when we got home I noticed we had lost several bales of hay! Dad straps his loads pretty securely so that was a puzzle. Well next morning I noticed that a tire on the flat bed was ruined. I bet it blew out and that caused the trailer fish-tailing and the fish-tailing flung some bales off and caused the strap to come loose. So we payed for 90 bales and got less than 80 home, plus the tire is completely ruined and I don't know about the rim.

Sunday I rode Shade from swallowtail parking lot. It was hot in the lot but pretty decent as soon as we climbed to the first ridge. The parking lot was almost abandoned, I was wondering if there was something I should know keeping folks away. The parking lot floods and there was still a muddy patch on its north end but it would have been fine for 2-3 horse trailers and several cars. I guess everyone else drove up to the national forest to escape the heat, I wasn't sure how to get there and wanted to stick with the trailhead I knew just going by myself. We went about 9.5 miles out and then turned back. Shade was content to take it easy coming back and it actually took us longer than going out, much to my surprise, even though I had asked her to keep a pretty decent pace heading out. But no other horses hurrying back to keep up with and no buddy back at the trailer Shade just took it easy. She did not seem overly tired but I am a bit concerned that going 50 miles on the 19th is going to be a tough haul. I guess I'll find out if I can ride wisely enough to get a horse through a tough ride.