My son has been wanting to go horseback riding ever since he took lessons when was three years old. Back then we were doing a themed unit study on horses, and ever since, he saw himself as a cowboy. He would wear cowboy boots around the house, and several birthday parties were themed around horses or Wild West shows. He even wrote a creative writing assignment set in the Wild West, culminating in a show-down with a villain set in a western town.
So when we had an opportunity to go horseback riding in Spokane for his 16th birthday, I finally booked it. When I told him, his face lit up. We had several months to look forward to it, and last Saturday we finally went. We had found True West Trail Rides on a web search, and the fact that the trail that we chose was by the Spokane River made it all the more lovely!
We filmed the experience for you to enjoy:
We met at an equestrian area at Riverside State Park. As soon as we arrived, we signed some papers, and the kids put on riding helmets. My husband and I opted to not wear riding helmets and signed papers accordingly. It was a beautiful sunny day. A nice breeze was blowing in the shade under the trees.
It’s been a while since I’ve gone horseback riding. Back when I was a teacher at an American school in London, I was a chaperone on a pony trekking field trip in Wales. I remember riding a tall pony for three hours and nearly falling off when the horse jumped over a small river with no warning.
This time my horse was well-behaved, and I was even able to film with one hand. I was holding onto the reins and the pommel (the handle at the front of the saddle) with my left hand. Every once in a while during the hour-long ride, I would film for a few seconds and then put the video camera into my fanny pack around my waist.
My kids enjoyed themselves and even had the horses trot every once in a while. We hiked on a trail through the forest, so we saw a lot of pine trees and other forest plants. We had to duck our heads several times to avoid running into branches. I could have avoided all branches by guiding my horse around them, but dork that I am, I was recording with one hand, so they snuck up on me.
Ducking branches reminded me about the biblical story of Absalom, King David’s son, being caught in a branch from riding a horse, and dying shortly thereafter. In all fairness, Absalom would not have died if someone had helped him down from the tree branch instead of a group of soldiers stabbing him because he was in the middle of a war. Thankfully I was not in a war. Like I said, it was a pleasant sunny day.
We had the rare opportunity to see a buck with antlers! My husband took this picture on his phone, but you can see this same buck in our video footage above. It was hiding in the upper left hand area of the video. Perhaps it’s worth watching the video again to see this delightful sight. When I was recording it, I couldn’t see the buck through the forest. My husband was pointing, and I filmed in the direction of his pointing. I’m surprised I caught it on film!
You can see in the video that we had an amazing view of the Spokane River. I filmed some of it and never took a picture because I decided to just enjoy it. I suppose I should have filmed more, since further down the river, it was an aqua color. It was beautiful! It would have been nice if I had caught this on film, but I’m also glad I was able to enjoy the moment.
When we arrived back at the starting point, we got our picture taken as a family. Here we are, sitting on our horses after our one-hour trail ride:
We thoroughly enjoyed not only riding the horses, but the tour guide’s conversation, as well as the beautiful scenery surrounding the trail. Wherever you live, there are probably places you can go to ride horses. It’s a unique experience to have as family-bonding time. We loved it!
Related article: Cowboy Birthday Party
