10 Mile Trail Ride

This past Friday my friend Leanna and I loaded up our horses in the trailer and headed to one of the many beautiful state parks in our area. We are blessed to have many places to horseback ride that are in beautiful parks.

This particular day we went on a 10 mile ride. About 10 minutes into our ride Leanna said, "Emily, there's a black bear!" And sure enough there it was! I was so excited . . . .I have been riding in Florida for almost 6 years and have never seen a black bear. I have run into deer, wild pigs, an alligator,coyotes, snakes and disgusting HUGE banana spiders . . . .but never a bear.

My camera was in my saddle bag behind me so I was trying to quickly grab it. The bear walked to the middle of the trail and just sat there and stared at us a for a minute.

I finally got my camera out and was able to get one shot as he ventured into the woods. If you see on the right hand side kind of in the middle of the picture you will see something black . . that is the bear! After the bear walked into the woods our horses decided they didn't want to budge. We tried everything to get the horses to move and they were just planted and not going to move. Finally, Leanna got off Cloud and decided to walk past the point where the bear was. That did the ticket . . .it's amazing how spooky they were after this.
After another 30 minutes they both seemed to calm down. We enjoyed the wonderful scenery of the "real Florida"

This is one of the longest trail rides that we travel on.Horseback riding is so relaxing for me. I have been blessed to have my horse for over 5 years and I am so thankful for my friend Terri for blessing me with him!