Granite Bay ride

Thursday-no rain.  Beautiful day.  Dune, Sky and Zoe went to Granite Bay today.  Every horse had their small issues, but they were mostly good for the ride.  Zoe got a chance to be in front, middle and back.  She did good in all places.  No head tossing today.  She tried to spook at a few things, but I kept her moving and we passed them without stopping.  There is a pole that sticks out of a rock as you go around a curve-also a cliff on the outside of the curve.  Zoe has never liked this place.  So we purposely changed the lead horse to Sky before we got there, Sky has no problem with the pole.  I put Zoe right behind him and she passed it just fine, just gave it "the ear" but didn't change her pace as we went by.  Now if I put her in the lead...well we might have stopped.
At Granite Bay there were mules.  I've never had Zoe around mules and I know some horses really check them out and might think they aren't okay.  Zoe really checked them out.

Then some other horses came up on the trail and Sky and Zoe had to check them out.

Dune needs a picture too.

The mules left and went down the trail in the same direction we were going to go.  So we stopped to eat some more grass and make some space between them and us.  When we left Granite Bay I put Zoe in the lead.  She was in a hurry because we were going home, so sometimes we walked and sometimes we trotted.   As we went around one of the curves she got her hind feet caught up in some branches that someone had left at the edge of the trail.  So her reaction was to buck to get out of the them.  I stayed on, but wasn't sure why she bucked.  We quickly turned a circle and my friends told me what had made her buck.  They said the way she was caught up that any horse would have bucked.  I practice with things at  the barn that get wrapped around her legs.  I guess I need to practice with branches.
We continued on and 1/3 of the way home we changed lead horses.  Sky was now in the lead and remained there all the way home.  What was next interesting was that we caught up with the mules.  They had pulled over to the side to rest.  We passed them just fine.  Zoe was in the middle and Dune was in the back.  As we went on the mules were catching up to us.  Dune didn't like them behind him and Zoe didn't like it either...they both got nervous.  About this time our turn off towards the forest came up so we really got away from them.  I guess  Dune and Zoe don't like mules much.  It made us think about endurance riders that always have riders come up behind them.  Must be interesting to deal with that.
On the way home we tried to put Dune and Zoe next to each other on a wide trail.  Zoe was doing the typical mare attitude and when we walked side by side...Zoe layed her ears back.  It was interesting.  We made her deal with it and she got better...gave her a break...then did it again.  By the end of the ride she was much better.  What was interesting was if Dune was in back and came up beside us it was harder for her to deal with.  She did better if she was in the back and came up beside Dune.  Silly horse.