A Bad Week for Fences and Gates

Tuesday morning as I was pulling on my jeans to help with the morning chores, barely awake, and shivering in my cold dark closet, Brett opened the front door and called up to me.  "We have a problem."  My first thought was burst pipes but, no, it was another section of fence in the front pasture that was leaning to the ground.  We had to move Flash and Mufasa out of the pasture so Brett could remove and replace the fence.  I didn't want to put them in with the donkeys because Mufasa can be a bully and I didn't want him to bother Tuffy and Finessa.  I moved Jackson, Lucy and Pistol over to the donkey pasture and Brett put Flash and Mufasa in the Oak pasture.  Jackson joined the donkeys first.  He's spent time in the pasture before, when he has had an abscess.  He immediately got to work on breakfast.  Pistol is always interested in food so she hardly looked at the donkeys, huddled in the back corner of their pasture, watching the horses arrive.  Lucy has been fascinated by the donkeys since her arrival.  (She nickers softly to Tuffy when we walk by their pasture and seems to think he is foal in need of mothering.)

When I removed Lucy's halter, she immediately paced the fence line and sniffed the piles of donkey poop; oblivious to breakfast.  Tuffy approached her with his ears forward and a jaunty attitude.  He reached his nose up to her and she arched her neck while touching her nose to his.  Tuffy gave a little squeal and bucked.  She trotted off -- and he joined her.  They did a lovely circle, side-by-side.  Lucy stopped, looked over at the others eating hay, and headed their direction.  Tuffy ran in circles around her; trying to get her to play.  She squealed at him and he ran off, kicking out in her direction as he went.  Finessa, remained at a safe distance, watching.

Tuesday night after dinner, while I was buried under a blanket on the couch in my sweats, there was a knock on the door.  Brett climbed out from under his blanket on the recliner and padded to the door.  Kersey looked up with interest from her bed and thumped her tail.  A delivery guy stood there, he had left us a box on the front porch.

"Your gate closed on my truck and I can't get out," he explained to Brett.

Brett put on his work boots and jacket and met the guy down by the gate.  He had dropped off our box and then drove back down the driveway.  The gate opened and he started through.  Then for some unknown reason, he stopped halfway out to do paperwork or make a phone call or god-knows what.  The gate stopped when it hit his van, but there it sat wedged.  Brett released the gate, and the guy drove off.  And the gate no longer worked.  Brett secured it closed with a bungie cord and stomped back to the house.

Yesterday morning, our friend and neighbor, George, came over with his bag of tricks and mechanical knowledge.  The gate had blown a fuse (we didn't even know it had a fuse) and it was an easy, inexpensive fix.

Later in the afternoon, Brett noticed that the wire had come off of a section of fence between the arena and our neighbor's property.  The posts are still solid in the ground so the repair won't be as extensive as the pasture.  Poor Brett, he never seems to get a break.

Our Longest Hike in, well, Forever

Brett and I used to love hiking together.  Then his knees quit working and my feet started screaming so we pretty much quit.  Brett now has two bionic knees and I have wonderful inserts in my shoes.  In the past year, we've started going on short hikes together.  While we were in Yosemite, we decided to tackle the mist trail, which leads to Vernal Falls.  Our plan was to go as far as the footbridge, which gives you a view of the falls in the distance.  The climb is pretty steep but not too long to get to that point.  We stopped on the bridge, admired the view, caught our breath and waited for our heart rate to return to normal... and then we kept going.

At the junction of the mist trail and the John Muir Trail we veered right and headed towards Nevada falls.  We put our heads down and made our way up the switchbacks.  One, two, three... a look at each other, a smile ... four, five, six ... glancing up, the sheer face of the cliff rising above the last switch back ... seven, eight ... legs like rubber, we hit the top and the trail started to level off.  Then we hit ice.

We turned around.  I tried to walk on it a bit, but it was slick and slippery and I almost fell.  I sat on my butt and slid back down the trail to Brett.  And we headed down.

At the trail junction, we turned back onto the mist trail and continued up towards Vernal Falls.

We got fairly close, but didn't climb the stairs carved into the granite.
I took a picture and we headed back down.

We hiked almost six miles.  SIX MILES!  And it was a steep six miles.  Brett's knees were a bit sore and our feet were screaming by the time we got back to the car, but we were thrilled with ourselves.

This morning we left right after breakfast.  A storm was coming in and we didn't want to be caught in the snow.  We barely made it out.  The snow was falling thick and fast, the road obscured and cars on the shoulders -- either giving up or sliding there.  We managed to get through (gotta love a Subaru).

We stopped at a couple wineries on the way home and were gifted with a gorgeous sunset when we left Cooper Vineyards.

Back home, Chris had tucked the horses in the barn.  Brett went to the neighbors to fetch Kersey while I got the wood stove going.  It was 48F in the house; in the 30s with slushy ice on the ground outside.