Molly’s Great Adventure

As promised, the story of the final dramatic flare to Autumn’s day of searching for Mustangs…

After a wonderful, perfect day we reached Benjamin to say farewell to Kathleen and Blair around 11pm only to find that Molly, our cute Mini-Australian Shepherd,

was no longer in the back of the truck and that the last time we knew for sure she was there was miles back at Vernon! Immediately Blair and Don took off to see if they could find her but no success, the next 24 hours was spent posting reward posters up and down those vast miles with very sad children, calling her and waiting. Late that following evening a call came in that she had been spotted, frantic along the road just before Eureka. Again, Don, Blair and Kathleen immediately headed out but couldn’t find her, after yelling themselves hoarse and slowly driving up and down the spot she was last spotted Don felt prompted to open the van doors. Out of nowhere a very exhausted Molly jumped into the van and laid down exhausted next to Don, licking his hand – if dogs could cry Don was sure Molly was doing it. In her nervous and scared state she was smart enough to stay where she had fallen out of the truck, but too scared to come to a voice calling her name – the “whoosh” of the van doors was the only thing she recognized as “her people” (another side note: it was up in the mountains and the truck would have been the obvious vehicle to take, but Don took the van…) we were very grateful to get her back and very grateful to Blair and Kathleen, and Heidi and Rhett who rallied around and contributed in her coming home! Here is the video of some very sad little girls finding out Molly was found! If you listen closely you can hear the one quick bark Molly let’s out when she sees the girls.

Horse Crazy

It’s time to go back… life has been crazy with 5oth Anniversary, family visiting, remodeling, 4th of July (the biggest celebrated Olsen Holiday), and being in the special “summer swelling-gut kicking-exhausting being 35 and pregnant” condition, but I MUST go back to May and revisit our oldest, Autumn, turning 10 years old!!! As her birthday loomed closer we gave her a choice of having a friend party or going on a search for wild Mustangs and after a very short deliberation she gave up her months of “Bella Sara 10 year old mega friend horse party” planning to respond with a definite tone – “Mustangs.” Don had researched where the local Utah herd was most likely to be located and we loaded up our truck and headed to Benjamin to get Grandma and Poppa Olsen who followed in their truck. Then we headed out pass Eureka and Northwest to Vernon where we made a quick gasoline stop,

and with our family it is never too soon to have adventurous injuries which Bizzie demonstrated when she fell out of the truck trying to get in all by herself…

With that adventure under our belt we headed west once again.  It was one of the first nice, warm days of the year and we were anxious but hopeful that we would find the mysterious herd out near Fish Springs. Well, the Mustangs were slow in showing themselves and as we searched in every canyon, waterhole, and mountaintop for them we encountered just about everything else…

Cows…

Antelope…

Plants…

Cute Kids…

Uncooperative Kites…

And finally, after a lot of false leads (mostly sheep herder’s horses standing alone, pretending to be mustangs – so deceptive) Poppa spotted what looked like a herd against the base of the mountain! Ever hopeful we hoped out of the truck, binoculars in hand to see if this was it!

And there they were, a huge herd grazing along the mountain base! Near a dirt road nonetheless!

Trusting they wouldn’t gallop off in an hour, and starving after a morning-to-late afternoon hunt for the elusive herd we stopped for a quick, late lunch and to celebrate Autumn’s birthday before we continued the up-close and personal portion of the Mustang Adventure.

 

Here’s Animal reporting LIVE (at the time) at Simpson Springs:

And, because I love watching how real my kids think Animal is here are two more videos of Animal getting interviews with Bizzie and Kathleen, and then Liberty. I think they are worth watching and funny, but totally get it if one Animal video is enough.

Before we left Simpson Springs we got some very splintery, but cute pictures, here’s my favorite:

This is the restored Pony Express station at Simpson Springs.

Now, it was time to go visit the herd!!! After figuring out which dirt road would take us the closest we were finally getting close to our goal! As we approached the horses on the outer edge of the herd we realized we were going to have to go in on foot as we startled them and watched them majestically gallop toward their herd. (I was expecting mangy, dirty horses but these were…beautiful. Don carefully got Autumn and Bizzie within 20 yards of the mustangs and they took pictures and stared for over an hour.

A gazillion pictures were taken of the mustangs and I just picked a couple that showed them the best…

A satisfied Autumn.

What a day! After a sober but satisfied farewell we headed home. On the way we stopped to let Poppa top off the experience by giving the girls and a pregnant woman the opportunity to fire off a rifle and pistol.

 

Nice . . .

You would think that would be enough for one day wouldn’t you?! And it would have been, the fun end to a perfect day…but we Olsen’s like to go out with more flare and drama than that…

More to come about that later . . .