Magical Pony Club Weekend: Thursday/Friday

My level of frustration with blogger is SO HIGH. About 90% of the time, it inserts photos backwards of the way I selected them. I don't have the patience to move that many photos around, so this post (and probably most of the next few photo-heavy ones from my trip) will probably be in reverse chronological order..... sigh. Anyway. I guess read from the bottom up if you want it to be in the correct order of when they were taken lol. 

So. Where do I begin? The beginning? Well, that's a long way back, but suffice to say, blogger friends are the best friends. This wacky little corner of the internet has brought SO MANY cool people in my life. Two of those people are T and Renate (Renate doesn't blog anymore but she totally should because she's a badass eventer who has cool adventures and gorgeous horses). I met Renate for the first time at Rolex back in 2017 (back when it was actually still Rolex lol) and I met T for the first time when she was driving through my area while moving and needed a place to crash, oddly enough also in 2017 - although more recently you may remember she came down to trail ride last year! The universe works in mysterious ways and when a planned visit from Renate didn't work out last fall (#pandemicproblems), and she was going to be on the west coast early this year, T and I decided to bring the party to her! Photos at the bottom of the post are from Thursday (arrival day, I had a late flight which was a dumb decision, because T and Renate got a head start on riding without me *SOB*), but the real fun didn't really start until Friday! Below are photos from our ride out on Friday afternoon, and then you can see our visit to Lake Tahoe from Friday morning.  

PINCH ME I'M DREAMING
Those red ears belong to Gatsby!

We had a late start that afternoon so we made it a brief ride. Once the sun drops behind the mountains it gets cold!

We rode down to a lake that you could access from their trails - it was windy and the water was choppy, but Gatsby was ready to go play in it if I asked him to. Such a good boy!

Cracked open a seltzer on the way out once Gatsby and I had sussed each other out a bit. I didn't want to end up wearing it if I didn't have to, so I wanted to be sure I could manage the drink in one hand and reins in the other lol. 

I've heard so much about Gatsby over the years that it was so fun to actually get to meet and ride him! He looooooves the trails and was game for literally anything. He's a ton of fun, and getting a chance to ride in a WOW saddle after talking about them with T so much was also very cool!

The lone wild horse we saw on the way to Tahoe - we saw more later in the weekend but I wasn't fast enough with my phone! 

This was Duke, a handsome belgian who was giving sleigh rides!

A nice lady walked by saw us taking a selfie and offered to take a photo from further back for us <3

I wish I'd taken this from further back, because that was a very tall lifeguard stand and Drifter was 100% over our shit at this point haha. 

LOOK AT ALL THESE ROCKS
(anyone else spend entirely too much time on IG reels? No? Just me? Ok then lol)

Drifter did not want to participate in our adventure unicorn 2.0 shenanigans and she made that pretty clear lol. 

I haven't sorted through the photos I took with my DSLR, but even the phone shots are insanely stunning. 

Friday morning the weather was great so we decided to play tourist and hit up Lake Tahoe!

Renate is my Ogilvy dealer, it's worse than crack LOL.

The sun slowly creeping down the mountains every morning was so lovely. I took a truly ridiculous number of photos of it. 

HOW IS THIS EVEN REAL

Vesta's feelings on us taking too long to clean stalls and not turning her majesty out fast enough lol. 

It was literally this gorgeous every direction you turned. I can't imagine waking up to this view every day! (but I'm glad I got to take advantage of it for 5 days)

Adventure unicorn 2.0 got in a little gambling while we waited for our bags. 

Chasing the sunset all the way west. 

Adventure unicorn 2.0 and I on my first plane to San Diego!

My old fauxbarrys were finally dying (after 5 years of rough use, not bad for $100 boots lol) so I replaced them. Apparently Ovation doesn't make the previous model I had (Duncan) so I got these (Glenna). The TSA lady LOVED them lol. 

Stay tuned for the second installment next week!

I'll leave you with a photo of me on Gatsby at the lake!