Fort Robinson Day Four! Part Two... Rattlesnake!!

Rosie and Little Joe

It was such a nice day and now the horses had their snorting worked out for the trip, we decided to go ride up a creek bed and around the northwest side of the camp.  We all took off later in the afternoon.  Rev was riding pretty good for Mike by now. 

Cindy, Conrad, and Rosie

It's wide open in Nebraska.  Lots of prairie to ride through.  You can get on a cow path sometimes but most of the time you are just riding through knee high grass.  Still lots of gates to open but that's not so bad.  It allows you to stop and get off for a bit and rest.

Conrad is good enough at gates that he doesn't have to get off though.  It's pretty fun to watch him work his horse through the gates.  So we just rode along having fun.

Sometimes we just stop to talk a bit so I'm nice and I let Lucy have a little bite to eat...

So we are walking along having a good time.  Lucy and I usually bring up the back because we are slow.  Cindy was riding a bit in front of me next to Mike and we were all chit chatting a bit.  All of a sudden I hear a loud rattle and the grass starts moving about 4 feet in front of me...  Between me and Mike and Cindy.  I was caught a bit off gaurd by the grass moving.  There are a lot of cicada's that make that kind of rattle sound but this was a little different.  It was quick and hard and then all of a sudden a rattle snake lunged out of the grass at me and Lucy mouth open.  Scary!!  Lucky for me, I was on Lucy and not the two year old.  Lucy went straight up in the air and to the right away from the snake while I was just trying to stay on.  If I had fallen off, I would have landed right on the snake, it was that close to me and Lucy.  It's amazing how far a snake can launch themselves.  Cindy said later I was really lucky she didn't start bucking because Lucy looked pretty frightened.  I did give Mike heck later because as soon as he knew it was a snake, he was out of there...  But Mike responded that if he were riding and a huge spider jumped out at him, he was pretty sure I would be out of there.  I told him, I would be gone in a heart beat so touche!  Guess it's good to have perspective.  :-)
So, that was easily my closest brush with anything like this before when I've been trail riding.  It scared the holy heck out of both me and Lucy.  But what a rush and a really good story to tell the kids when I get home!  I better not tell my Mom though....  That would not be a good conversation.
So after all the excitement, we continued on, happy to be alive and not calling 911 for the helicopter.  :-)

Happy to be alive.  Better start working on my bucket list.

When we got back to the barn, I gave unsaddled Lucy, brushed her out good, and put her away with some extra feed for taking such good care of me.

Then we sat around the horse barn just yakking some more and messing around.

Willll-buuurrr

Later that night, Mike started up a fire and and we sat around until I pooped out around 10:00.  It was a pretty exciting day at Fort Robinson that day.