Summer Recap

Summer is almost over. In two days I am headed back to school for my junior year, which promises to be difficult. The days until the day school officially starts will be a whirlwind of packing, travel, volleyball camp, farm work, and meeting up with friends.

Like last summer, this break has been incredibly full. In the first few weeks, after going to Cape Ann, I went to Florida to visit family and went to the Carriage Museum. Instead of taking a driving lesson I just went for a hack around the property, which was a lot of fun and let me have the experience of cantering over bigger hills than I have in the past. It sounds a little silly but I've never really done that before.

After Florida, I came back to Austin for several weeks to ride and play volleyball before going to Washington, DC for my cousin's wedding on the 4th of July weekend.

When I came back from DC I had two weeks to prepare for my one show of the year, the first Summer Circuit. Jones was pretty good; we had a bit of trouble with him stopping out at fences, which cost us a lot of ribbons. However, the rounds when we had no stops were good and we did place in a few classes.Unfortunately, no one took any pictures of my rides.

Two or three days after the end of the show, Isabel and I were on a plane again, this time to Jackson Hole. Finally!

As you can see, there were a lot of moose in the yard! I also made my way out to Mormon Row one morning.

And now I'm back in Austin for a few days. Hope you enjoyed the photos. Also, I am planning to start a one-weekly post schedule when school starts so pictures don't pile up like this. 

Time to Relax

It's summer! I got out of school last week, after a long and grueling week of final exams.

Well, it wasn't all that bad. I ended up in good shape with straight A's and an Award in Spanish to my name. So now it feels really good to relax. I'm in Florida again, and as you might expect I'll be making my annual visit to the Carriage Museum soon.

Where I am in Florida doesn't always lend itself to fun photography unless horses are involved, but I do have a few shots to share from Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

The famous "Motif #1" at Bearskin Neck

I took a lot of photos as usual but these are the only ones I like. When we arrived at the Cape the weather was very cold and rainy, so I didn't have my camera out. Over the next few days we boulder-hopped along a rocky section of coastline, visited Bearskin Neck and Rocky Neck to check out the art galleries, and climbed up part of a cliff over the ocean that my dad used to climb a lot, years ago. I ended up climbing that cliff barefoot because the highly impractical ballet flats I was wearing finally broke after two years of almost non-stop use. I think it was more fun barefoot than it would have been in sneakers, though I wouldn't advise following my example.

My mom is also blogging a bit more actively now, so you should take a look at her blog here.

Riding in a Cast

Spring break is almost over! This means that I've already finished my shift of farm sugaring, have already gone skiing, and am now back in Austin. Obviously, I have a few pictures to show for it.

Sugaring was incredibly fun. We had several good sap runs, some lovely weather, and best of all it was a week spent living with around 10 of my best friends. It was a very good time.

In Jackson, my dad and I skied for two days. The snow conditions weren't great--I've never seen the Bowl in such terrible shape--but a good part of the mountain was skiable and we had two very good days. The moguls were great!

And that brings us to yesterday, when I went riding in a cast. I didn't think I'd be allowed to ride, but  was proven wrong, on the condition that I make my best effort to not fall off. It was a pretty decent ride--my instructor noted that my hands are much better now than they were last time I rode Jones, and that I must have been doing a lot of flatwork. She was right; that's pretty much all we do at Stoneleigh. (Even if it gets a little frustrating, at least when I start being allowed to jump bigger I'll know that I must have REALLY good eq on the flat. Or something like that.) I think my leg also looks better on the flat. 

My mom took a bunch of pictures. Here are the best ones.

I'll be able to go riding again tomorrow, and might actually be able to take some pictures of my own. Also, I spent a good portion of last night oiling my saddle, so now it looks absolutely gorgeous. I'm always surprised by how well it takes oil. 

More pictures soon!

Quick Notes

I haven't written on here in a while, which seems to be a trend, but this time I have a good reason other than procrastination. For three weeks after Christmas, I lived on a ship and sailed around the Antarctic Peninsula with about 100 other people. A week after getting back, I still don't quite know what to say about it that won't sound cliche. It was incredible and life-changing and I met tons of people who I now miss, not to mention I was in Antarctica! I even went swimming in Antarctic waters. For anyone who's thinking about going down there... Deception Island's hot sands do NOT qualify as comfortable. Not at all. Saying that the water temperatures are approaching comfortable would be way overselling it. Still, I'm glad I did it! Oh, and I saw about 1 million penguins. And loads of Fur Seals and Humpback Whales and Elephant Seals and Skua Birds and ice! The pictures will come eventually. Actually, I got a lot of help from the two professional photographers who were on the trip, and I could see the difference in my shots from beginning to end. This may be my favorite--it's a leopard seal lying on an ice floe. We got up to about 5 feet away from him. See that snot? I could have reached out and wiped it off, if I'd thought I could spare my hand.

There are so many more shots and stories that I want to show and tell, but in this venue I can't really do them justice. Honestly I can't do them justice in any venue! People ask me what it was like and I can never explain it. It's something that I know now I have to do again--either that or go there for work. It made me seriously consider dropping my ambition of becoming a veterinarian and instead studying wildlife biology. This, of course, calls for much more dedicated coursework than I've put in so far this year, but to get back there, I can do it.

Here are a few more photos from the trip. There are many, many more! I might post them eventually.

Iceberg at Cuverville Island

Skua bird at Neko Harbor

Gentoo Penguin at Lookout Point, Elephant Island

Skua chick at Hannah Point, Livingston Island

Fur Seal pup at South Georgia Island

Moving forward from this trip will be interesting. School has not held quite as much interest for me, now that I've gotten a taste of what's out there, but I'm readjusting. Just last night Eliza had a new calf on the farm. It's a spotted heifer out of a very flat-brown colored cow, and the calf is just gorgeous. I didn't have my camera on me when I went to the farm this morning because I just dropped in after a run, but I'm planning on going back down as soon as I can--maybe tomorrow morning--to get some pictures. We've had such cold temperatures lately that Rachel and Liam moved Eliza into the heated tack room to give birth, instead of the regular box stall. I hadn't actually been down to the farm all week because I had to make up work, so this morning was the first time and I was feeling guilty for taking so long to get back to my place.

Anyway, life is happening and I have homework, so this is where tonight's post ends. You may expect a lot more pictures in the future, because both of the photographers on the trip seemed to believe that I can make something of my photography. I'll be working hard.

Uruguay Photo Dump

Over the summer when  I was in Uruguay, I didn't take as many photos as I should have. It was a really cool experience which I now wish I had documented more fully. I did take a lot more than I have shown anyone, though. A few months ago I posted maybe three photos, which were the only ones I wanted to edit at the time. But today I went through and opened up a few more in Photoshop. Here they are.

Maldonado

At a museum in Punta del Este

Near Punta del Este

Waves

Estancia Finca Piedra

At a wildlife preserve on the way to Punta del Este

Family Weekend

Last month I promised to post the photos from our hikes over fall family weekend, but didn't have time to edit the photos until now. And I think most of the photos are probably on my mom's camera in Texas... oh well. Time to dive in.

For our weekend, my parents and I stayed at Pinkham Notch in the White Mountains. It's near the base of Mount Washington. The weather was iffy, so we decided early on that we wouldn't make an attempt on the summit, especially since we've done it a few times before and didn't need to again. Given our chosen path, that was probably a good decision. The route my father decided to take was up Huntington Ravine, through the Alpine Garden, and down the Lion Head. In retrospect, that was not the smartest way to go on such a damp and windy day.

Huntington Ravine is arguably one of the more dangerous paths in this area of the White Mountains, because of the rock slab and other outcroppings you have to climb up to get to the top. While these would not be too nasty on a dry day, they're slippery when wet. It's a good place to have a rope, even if it's just to be extra cautious. We didn't have one.

When we got to the rock slab, which requires a friction climb to the top, we found that it was very slick in some places, and at first it looked like we wouldn't be able to scale it. Having dismissed the marked route as not doable, we then proceeded to look around for all other possible ways up. Nothing went. Finally, we retried the marked path, and by that time it didn't seem so bad compared to the others. It went after all. Amazing, right? Who would have thought that the best path would be the marked one?

Finally we made our way to the top of the ravine, where we suddenly realized that--wow--it was actually kind of windy. The clouds were amazing, spilling from the Alpine Garden down into various ravines and gulches like the one we'd just come out of. The landscape looked very Scottish.

At the end of the Alpine Garden, which was actually a very short walk, we started down the Lion Head. I think that was probably the least comfortable part of the hike. I liked it more than scrambling up the seemingly endless Huntington Ravine, but the Lion Head was a steep downhill on rock. Even though the rocks were like stairs, all of our knees took a beating.

Just in time, we emerged from the woods and back into Pinkham Notch. It was just beginning to rain, and there was enough time to take a nice hot shower and be dressed in time for the 6:00 dinner call. It was short hike, but seemed like a pretty long day. There wasn't enough vertical rise to compare it to a lot of the hikes we do in Jackson, but there were some pretty sketchy spots in Huntington Ravine, and I wouldn't call it an easy hike.

As for photos, I just checked my hard drive and it turns out that for most of the trip, I was busy playing with my mom's new Rebel, so all the photos are on her computer. The one good photo on my camera that I actually took myself was this one:

Reminds me so much of fall! Fall is a great season. But it's winter now, so frost and snow are on their way! I have mixed feelings but winter means that morning and evening chores need doing on the farm, so I'm happy.

Draft Pulling

Two weekends ago was Family Weekend up here at school. My parents flew up for the long weekend. For Friday and Saturday we hung around campus; my parents had parent-teacher conferences and I was leaping on the opportunity to staff the farm stand. This was apparently a bad math weekend for me, because I kept having trouble making change. Several parents raised their eyebrows and one practically reprimanded me for being mathematically challenged. But honestly, who really cares about skeptical parents when you're hanging around the farm?

After all of our business on campus was finished, it was time to drive up to New Hampshire to hike. I'm actually going to make a different post about the hiking; this is about what we saw on the way up to Pinkham Notch, and how we almost missed dinner (served at 6:00 PM sharp, and don't even think about being late!).

As we drove away from school through Swanzey, Mass, we ran across a massive tack shop called the Cheshire Horse. Inside they had a flier about the 54th Annual Eastern Draft Horse Association Championship Round Up. My dad was really interested so away we went to find the fairgrounds where the last event of the weekend was taking place.

When we arrived, the final pulling competition was in full swing, and what a sight it was. There was a huge tractor at one end of the ring, attached to a metal sledge loaded with enormous cement blocks. The tractor pulled the sledge back after each team pulled. The arena was full of both horses and people. Teams of two horses were lined up at the larger end of the ring with a small open space in the middle. And all around were camp chairs with people in them, presumably drivers of these teams. It seemed like an incredibly dangerous setup to me, especially because sometimes the teams would be walking over to the sledge and almost run into one of the people hanging around on the sides.

The pulling was amazing. These horses were in the 3400 lb weight class, which I'm pretty sure included both of the horses. They would be ground driven to the sledge, turned around, and two handlers on either side would drop the yoke onto a hook on the sledge. The horses would then explode forward, urged on by their eager drivers (sometimes aided by hats flapped at the horses' rears).

The horses were originally pulling 8000 lbs. Then as teams were eliminated, it became 9000 lbs and then 9500 lbs. We had to leave before they added any more.

I thought the horses were really pretty, as well as kind of ferocious-looking when they were being driven.

Still, I'd rather be outside the pen petting them than in the ring driving them.

I'll be posting more photos of these guys later (I took over 1000) as well as photos from Stoneleigh-Burnham and Mount Washington.

Snow King

A few days ago my sister, mom, and I hiked up Snow King, the town hill of Jackson. To start we went up the requisite front face with me leading as I always like to. After looking out from the Panorama House at the top of the King, we walked to the northeast, down into a saddle, and up the next ridge. It was a steep climb on a very, very faint trail; even though the trail is marked on the map of the mountain and it's visible from the opposite ridge, it was much more difficult to follow from the ground.

When we got to a good lunch spot, a few rocks at the top of the ridge, we got an amazing view of the Tetons. Or at least, it would have been if there hadn't been so much smoke from the fires in Idaho and to the north of the park. Still, it was pretty up there. We could see all the way into the bowl behind the circle of ridges as well as the little trail snaking down into it. It was a nice day, too.

The third part of the hike was back down to the base. Instead of taking the chairlift as we do on occasion, we walked back to the saddle between the two ridges and down the front in the woods. It's really a bike path and has a lot of switchbacks which go down the hill. It's a surprisingly long way down but all very pretty because it's in the deep but sunny part of the pine forest. In all, we think the hike was about 6 miles or so. It was a great day hike and I do recommend it.

Holly Lake

On Thursday, the day after we arrived in Wyoming, we went for our first hike in the Tetons. It was a pretty ambitious hike for a first one: 6.4 miles from String Lake, up Paintbrush Canyon to Holly Lake, and then 6.4 back. The wildflowers were absolutely incredible.

Apart from going for that hike, my sister, mom, and I ran a 5k from the Wildlife Art Museum on the new bike path while Ruth walked the course. I ran with Isabel who wanted to go a little slower than my pace so my time ended up being around 30.30. Our mom ran it in 23.something and came in second place without even being totally acclimated. We also saw the ducks in the Elk Refuge and a bison and her calf on the bike path on the way back.

trying something a little bit new