Hunting for Wild Horses

Since today was a school holiday, the kids slept over at our place last night. Today, they wanted to go to a couple of places that feature video games or rides, but we had another idea. We drove up into the Tonto National Forest to attempt a sighting of wild horses. On the way, we stopped at an overlook where we got our first view of the Salt River.

Several miles up the road, we drove out to a day use area right on the river where we took in this amazing view.

And, we were treated to a sighting of this Vermilion Flycatcher, which I understand from this evening's research is pretty rare in this area. I wish you could see the brilliant flashes of scarlet when he flies!

I'm trying to make it a point to get some photos of the kids together to send to Mom. Here are a couple that I took in the grove of trees alongside the river.

Driving on we reached our destination, the area where our friends, Janet & Paul, had seen the horses. From the parking lot, we started hiking into the forest and along the river.

After a while, Rich and Dylan were clearly outpacing the rest of us so I asked Rich to take the camera, thinking that they might have better luck finding horses since they would be covering more ground. Guess again.

An hour or so later, Jackson thought he saw one and then we heard a whinny. The three of us crept toward the movement and saw four wild horses. Remember who had the camera? Thankfully, Jackson still had a bit of charge left on his phone so we have these.



After Rich and Dylan joined us again, we all saw these beauties in a group of five...

Well sure, we had to hike back out too! That is not the most fun part; even the kids were tired after all that exploring and all that excitement. It was so worth it though to see those magnificent creatures...and on our first time there too!

Lovin' Life ~~ And School Holidays