For Kelly’s birthday last year, we loaded up the horses and dogs and hit the mountains for some horse camping and day riding and we had A BLAST. I don’t know about him, but I was really looking forward to having a similar adventure this year.
Then the weather forecast said SNOW in the higher elevations and that blew my plans out of the water.
Then Kelly suggested we go “find the wild mustangs” and see if we could specifically find the mustangs in Jackson’s Herd Management Area (HMA). Sounded like a fun adventure to me!
We hit the road at 7:00 that morning (I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently this was a good 3+ hours behind the schedule Kelly originally planned for us) and headed South, down through Oregon. We drove through a couple of snow storms, ate lunch at a sketchy looking bar, and headed to the historical Pete French Round Barn.
I don’t have a wide angle lens to capture much of the inside, but you can see there is an “outer ring” and then an “inner section that’s more open.
From there, we got back on the road and headed out to find the mustangs. Kelly had researched the HMA’s and planned a route he thought would take us through the Kiger HMA to the Coyote Lakes HMA… and while he was probably correct, we got confused by the fencelines and where the “no trespassing” signs were located so we took an alternate “road” (I’m being super generous, these were not “roads”… seriously, think of the worst forest service road you’ve been on and multiply it by ten!).
As we were driving, first on the main road, then on the sketchy little trail road, it was crazy to watch the storms sit on the hillsides while the sun continued to shine in the valley.
Our detour added a lot of time and once we got our there a ways and saw that there was nothing to see as far as wildlife was concerned, we let the dogs out to stretch their legs for a few minutes and drink some water from Kelly’s coffee mug.
I’m honestly not sure how long we were out there before we spotted them in the distance… wild horses! And also, I’m blind and we didn’t have far away goggles with us so at first I wasn’t even sure what we were looking at WERE wild horses. I thought Kelly was pulling my leg when he said “yeah, that’s a horse and there’s a baby over there and another horse…”
I also made him stop super far away because I thought that was the only opportunity I would get for a photo. Little did I know, this little family was going to put on a show for us!
He was so brave, and so good at his job of protecting the mare and foal. He was always between us and them and always kept his eye on us.
According to the BLM website, Kiger mustangs are “noted for their intelligence and stamina. Horses in this herd vary in color from dun, grulla, buckin and variations of these colors including dorsal and zebra stripes. They are quality animals with dun factor coloration and Spanish mustang characteristics.”
These were all taken from the pickup with my 70-200 lens. I was so amazed that they let us get so close and posed so nicely for us!
Next, we continued on (we still hadn’t reached our intended route so it was a bit of a fluke that we came upon this little group) and soon we spotted a large herd in the distance.
They spotted us right away as well and were not interested in letting us get close. We watched in awe as they took off up a hillside.
I spent the rest of the day wishing I had a longer lens and could spend more time out here photographing and studying these amazing horses!
We finally met up with our intended “road” as the sun was setting and we ran into another large band on the hillside above us.
They were wary but also curious so they stood and watched us for a while.
You can definitely see the Spanish influence in that guy second from the right in the above photo.
By now we knew we needed to turn around and head back down the road we were originally supposed to be on if we wanted to be out of there by dark. This meant we didn’t get into the area Jackson originated from, but it was impossible to be disappointed after the day we had!
We stopped one more time for the dogs on our way out and took some landscape photos to document the environment these horses live in. I think it’s important to mention that we were driving around for HOURS and never saw a water source.
We grabbed supper at Dairy Queen on the way home and settled in for our 6+ hour drive through more snow storms. We also may have hit a deer, but Kelly handled it like a champ while I snored in the passenger seat.
We arrived home, still in awe from our day, at 2:00am.
Another amazing adventure!
