September Weekend at Bernier Ranch & Spa

It was a lovely weekend up at the Bernier Ranch & Spa...I went up mainly to go horseback riding with The BFF both days, but also wanted to check out a horse for sale in the area.

Well, as it turns out The BFF couldn't ride on Saturday at all and only had a couple hours to ride with us on Sunday (evidently pharmacy school takes studying on the weekends...who knew?), but I still had a good horsey weekend.

Saturday afternoon I wanted to head out with the dogs for a nice long hike but in spite of being gone for over 3 hours and walking countless miles, I never made it more than half a mile's distance from the house...I noticed some fencing that needed fixing in the horses' grass pasture; forgot my camera; tromped through the woods looking for Dad and ended up with two dogs – and all my clothes – covered in burs and porcupine eggs (which I then had to pick off everyone); both sets of horses needed to be grained and hayed...etc.

I hadn't been to the "Skinner's Cabin" for a couple years, either, so it was fun to hike around in the woods near there – which is where we picked up all the porcupine eggs – and see how the buckskinners have added to the space.

It was fun horsing around that evening with Mom...even thought we didn't set foot in the stirrups. We hung out in the pasture with the horses while they ate...it was nice to see that my mom's horse (Joon) has almost fully recovered from her suspensory ligament injury earlier this summer. She's definitely feeling her oats, as she showed us by running about with her tail in the air.


On Sunday morning we were off to Cut Foot, which is what everyone calls a set of trails in a state forest in Cass County. The BFF is only about 20 minutes from there, so it was the best place to meet up to ride for a couple hours.

The weather was perfect, the colors were riotous and the horses were all great...except Will, who bashed Mom's knee into a tree while we were brush-popping around a felled tree in the trail. Grrrr. Well, I guess that's what happens when you pay more attention to the horse you're ponying than the horse you're riding – right, Mom?! Thankfully her knee will be fine, but man we were worried at first. I was about ready to re-name Will "Alpo."

After our lovely ride we hung out in the sun for a bit, then had to load up the horses and head back home to get ready for the next part of our adventure: beginning my horse-hunt. We had an appointment to meet "Joey," a blue roan for sale in Palisade, MN.

Off we went.

He was a very good horse, and his people were uber-nice, but he was a bit "off" – we couldn't tell which leg was bothering him but he was definitely limping (as you can see here). Plus, I've never had to work so hard in my LIFE using my legs to get this horse to move (even made Will look like a walk in the park!). While I liked his personality and he was big enough for me, it just wasn't the right fit.

Oh well...like I told Mom, "you can't buy the first Christmas tree on the lot you see, you have to look at a bunch of them & choose from there." Same with horses :)

The hunt will continue in Wisconsin next weekend...maybe I'll end up with a horse from Packer-ville :)