Casendra the Explorer

Casendra loves to explore. We have a large IKEA bookshelf in our living room that sections off where we have our small office area. She uses the lower shelves to crawl through and get into all sorts of stuff. She likes small spaces and will squeeze right back into the corner under the computer. She investigates, wires, modems, buttons and of course empty chocolate containers in the garbage.

Blue Bronna Wilderness Camp 10th Annual Rideathon

99 riders, thousands of dollars raised. Great company, scenery, food and riding!

If you'd like to check out Blue Bronna and what they are all about visit: http://www.bluebronna.org/

Friends of ours invited us on this ride to raise money for the Blue Bronna wilderness Camp. Then they had to cancel as they had other commitments, but my mom reminded me about it and offered to babysit and then I asked John if he'd be willing to go with me and a bit surprisingly to me, he said 'yes'. So we phoned in, got registered, and put in our meager, though adequate, pledges. We arrived Friday night and slept in our motorhome. Bright and early Saturday morning we got up, ate the pancake and sausage breakfast they provided and got ready to ride.

What better way to spend a Saturday?

Here we were waiting to be assigned horses, This is BBWC's residential camping area which is just south of Longview. Next year I am hoping to come and bring my own horse like many others did. However, I was VERY glad to have gotten to ride an experienced mountain riding horse this time, some of the trails were darn scary. Steep, rocky, mazes of trees, very close knit that would rub you off or stick you in the eye without a second thought (of course they are trees so they don't think ... unless you are in the middle of one of the Lord of the Ring movies I guess :)

Blue Bronna rideathon weekend usually runs from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. But as I am still the main source of food for Casendra, we only stayed till Saturday night...(painful for me to go much longer without her) But next year we will try to make it for the whole thing.

Lots of people brought their own horses. It was great. All sorts of riders and non riders. The camp staff were open, friendly and seemed to have their hearts in the right place.

This is 'Jasper'. The lead wranglers family dog. He didn't really liked to be petted but he would play fetch forever. He had a very spooky stare though, creeped me out sometimes.

Going up...

This kid behind me, was such a quiet young guy (probably 12 or so), great with his horse and probably going to be a major heart breaker when he's older, he had all the right riding gear and looked the part of the western novel cowboy.

Up to the top of our first hill...ah, breathtaking it was.

This is an over the shoulder shot...not bad eh, my hair looks healthy even if John is fuzzy :)

Our leaders, Cody and Sarah (can only see the back of Cody's horse but he is there) They are married, and had met at Blue Bronna. They come back every year to help with this ride.

My Lindy Lou...for once in line where she is supposed to be. John's horse, Chinook, was about the only one she would stay behind and he didn't care when she'd run into his rump...which helped :)

Pictures of us...we really had an awesome time

cleaning his teeth...maybe from our early breakfast?

We rode for about 2 1/2 hours in the morning then broke for a burger and fries with dessert as well, for lunch. And then had a 3 hour afternoon trail ride followed by a BBQ'd and deep fried rib dinner. Excellent. After that we enjoyed learning more about the camp and its staff and their vision with a meeting time. Music included. They also gave out prizes for those raising the most money, which has given John a real desire to get more pledges next year (first prize was a brand new saddle/bridle/breastcollar/blanket set!!, so he decided it should be his next year :) selfish he says, but still for a good cause :)

Both of us (me and the horse) smiling :) check it out close up and guess Linky Lou's age...

Some more scenery

Picture cannot do this country justice (specially when you are trying to take it while riding a horse that simply will NOT stand still!)

River crossings included!

We crossed a couple rivers (or maybe the same one numerous times) We'd let them drink and then keep pressing on. Sometimes riding beside the river edges made me nervous. Bit of a drop and when the horses acted up from time to time...well, I wasn't sure their backup radar was competely intact as they would get pretty close. Our leader was ona green horse that got very close, but she said it did not make her nervous at all. Guess it helps to have done it hundreds of times ?

Here is a pretty good picture of Lindy Lou. She liked to be in front and did not like stopping for anything. She was as surefooted as a mountian goat which was really cool (and necessary!) She was barefoot (no shoes) but didn't stumble and went through mud, water, over trees, through bushes and in and out of trees like it was no problem. Great horse.
What a great day! I really enjoyed it, thanks for going with me John. We will be making this a yearly occassion...any who want to join us...feel free :)

This was our view if we looked back. A long line of riders, all shapes, sizes, ages and experience levels. Really neat. The weather was perfect, warm enough to get rid of my jacket. And because there were so many on the afternoon ride (more than 40 riders!) We stuck to fairly flat, grassy pathways, not much up and down steep dangerous obstacle filled mountain sides. (I liked it better :0)

Till Next year...

Saying goodbye to our 'steeds' Chinook and Lindy Lou! You two were great, thanks for the awesome rides. See you next year!

Veterinarian Sara at your service...

So, no pictures yet, as my camera died...but I simply could not wait, I removed that evil little grub with tweezers and used hydrogen peroxide to clean the 'warble hole' (internet said to), and I managed not to break the worm filled with posion open at all.

I am still taking the cat to the vet tomorrow, but if its chest cavity is filled with horrible worms...I'm not sure what will happen. We will not repeat the mounting bill of yesteryear, so pray please.

Thanks :), I'll show you the pics of the grub and the gaping hole it leaves tomorrow hopefully, I"m sure you all can't wait...but sadly you'll have to.

GROSS!!!!!!!

This is a close up of the chest of our 'new kitten'.
It used to have a kind of small wound on its chest, with a fairly large mound under the skin, so I thought perhaps it had a puncture wound (like a splinter or something) that would eventually work itself out. About a week later, another wound formed kind of on the other end of the internal lump and so we had 2 slightly seeping round sores.
Then a couple days I looked at it and thought it looked really quite good, like the wounds were healing.
We had decided not to take it to the vet, but let it get better or worse on its own after the last episodes with vets our family (mom) went through.
Then today, Emma was holding it and commenting on the wound looking good, I took it from her expecting to see it looking all healed when I noticed this....


















A hard protuding 'thing' that looked as though it was separate from the skin, like something coming out of his skin. You could see a hole around it...

Well...it is. It is a bot fly larvae, coming out of what is referred to as a 'warble', which is inside the kittens body. It often happens to squirrels, and is VERY RARE in felines, what luck we have eh?!!? Well, in squirrels, a bot fly egg gets laid and ends up on an animals skin where it burrows in and spends 3 weeks growing. Then when it is big enough it leaves the body (usually butt end first) and drops to the ground where it buries it self until spring when it turns into a fly.


SICK, GROSS, DISGUSTING, HORRID, NAUSEATING, MAKING ME FEEL ALL CREEPY CRAWLY, and well...gonna take it to the vet tomorrow where hopefully they will remove it and give the kitten some antibiotics to make sure it doesn't die. All in favor of this move say AYE! Seriously, it is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen, or touched (I was trying to see what it was, I didn't KNOW what it was and certainly didn't think I was squeezing the butt end of a freaking grub!!) oh, so queasy inside!

So, that is my fun tale for the evening. so horrible.