Black Beauty

When I was a little girl, I was crazy about horses.  I'd gallop around the school yard neighing like a horse and pawing the ground.  I didn't care if I looked like a fool, I was in my element.  All I could think about 24/7 was horses....and my first favorite book was of course, Black Beauty.

Black horses have always been my favorite; it's funny, but true black horses are hard to find - bays, with the chestnut body and black mane and tail, are very common.

I've been watching the arrival of the many foals at the horse farm near my house (see post below).  About 12 have arrived so far and almost all are bays, except for two:  a future grey and a light chestnut who is a dirty-blondish-type color. 

This afternoon I stopped to see if my favorite mare, Lucy, had given birth yet.  Nope - as I pulled up, I saw that she was still in the meadow with her swollen belly, chewing on a few strands of alfalfa.  But when I entered the barn I saw that a bay broodmare had foaled this morning - and it was a beautiful black colt!

Unsteady on those long legs

Trying to figure out where to nurse....

Ack!  Wrong end!

What's interesting about this little guy is that his mother is a "carrying mare" - she's not his biological mother.  His biological mother is the horse below.  Her name is Sonnengirl, and she is a champion jumper. 

And this is his father, a stallion named Sir Caletto.

Although this wasn't the colt's "real" mother, you would not have been able to tell.  As I walked quietly up to the stall she walked quickly over to me, prepared to protect her baby from me if I was a threat.  She stood quietly as the foal looked for the teat and waited patiently as he found the right place.  When he'd had enough and stretched out flat for a nap in the straw, she stood over him and seemed to gaze at him in wonder.  This was her first baby - she is what they call a "maiden" - and she was a good mother.

I've discovered that at times even the experts can have difficulty determining the color of a horse, and the true color of a foal before it matures.  The owner can take a snip of hair and send it away to one of those companies that does DNA tests, so I don't feel bad not knowing if this little black colt may mature into another color like silver or blue roan...but right now he's black, and to me that's very cool.

Cambria/Cayucos

At Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

I'm such a sucker.  I'll use any excuse I can come up with to hop in my car and take off down the road.  Last week I had two good excuses (or reasons):  I had been so anxious about finding employment, I'd been sporting a nasty headache 24/7 for more days than I could remember - plus the fact that I thought I HAD a new job, but it wasn't official yet.  Time to hit the road!

I was in the mood for something easy to get to, not too long a drive, and not too expensive.  Something relaxing where I didn't have to worry about dressing up when I went out....so I decided on the mid-California coastal area - and I had a hell of a good time with some new discoveries. 

CAMBRIA

Cool TV -not one of those 12-inchers

I decided to try the Creekside Inn again in Cambria; I'd had a not-very-good-experience the first time (the room was very unpleasant - see earlier post), but I wanted to save some money, and their room price was reasonable.  After calling them to make sure they had good wifi - which is important to me, as I'm a single traveler and I rely on my computer for evening entertainment - I paid ~$80/night for a double room (the only one they had left).  It turned out to be quite nice, although it was a pet-friendly room and in some places it showed.

[To the owners of Creekside Inn:  paint Room 12, please!]

 I really liked the balcony and sat there while using my laptop. Nice view, very peaceful.

The bathroom was clean

 

Wondrous signs of spring....

I had no idea there was a horse farm in Half Moon Bay until I went on one of my exploratory drives a few weeks ago and stumbled across it.  I made a right turn down a country road, navigating around potholes the size of Idaho, and soon came upon several lovely mares and their tiny foals in a large paddock.  A man with a delivery truck had also stopped and was taking pictures.  He said, "My kids will love these pictures - there's another mare with a foal in the barn there", indicating a building behind him with a nod of his head.

Living in an outdoor hotel...

...yup, that's where I live - in an RV park, aka an outdoor hotel.

Let me explain, but first an aside:

When I was 11, I saw the Hitchcock movie, "North By Northwest". Do you remember the scene at the beginning where Cary Grant strides through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel to the elevators? At that time he actually lived there.

(Another aside, courtesy of IMDB.com: Mr. Grant once phoned hotel mogul Conrad Hilton in Istanbul, Turkey, to find out why his breakfast order at the Plaza, which called for "muffins", came with only one and a half English muffins instead of two. When Grant insisted that the explanation - most people eat only three of the four halves brought to them - still resulted in being cheated out of a half, the Plaza changed its policy and began serving two complete muffins with breakfast. From then on, Grant often spoke of forming an English Muffin-Lovers Society, members who would be required to report any hotel or restaurant that served fewer than two muffins.)

I digress....