We went on a trail ride after a wonderful buffet breakfast at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.  We were planning to stay there--it is after all, one of the most famous hotels in Canada.  It looks like a Scottish castle circa 1880 and since I've always thought that perhaps I was a princess stolen at birth and placed with a common (although dysfunctional) American family, this seemed like it would be the ideal hotel for me.

However, they couldn't guarantee us adjoining rooms and as tempting as it was to house the kids somewhere on another floor of that castle/hotel, I just couldn't do it.  So, we ended up at the Rimrock.  Guess what?  After having been in the Fairmont Banff Springs I can tell you with all honesty that I like the Rimrock better!

It is smaller and more casual and seems to make more sense here in Canada.  The castle idea is wonderful in theory, but once inside the low ceilings, stone, brocade, and faux castle-like ambiance feels a bit too much like a theme ride at Disneyland for my taste.  I like authentic things.  Something that is made to look like something else just doesn't ring true.  So I will wait until someday when we actually are in Scotland to stay at a Scottish castle.  In the meantime, the Rimrock is just great.

We did enjoy the buffet breakfast at the Fairmont though, and the stables are right next door so that worked out perfectly.  I had been to horseback riding camp when I was 8 or so and hated it.  I mean despised it.  I came away with a really bad association with horseback riding.  I don't know if it was the fact that my parents had better things to do with their summer.

  My mom was in China with her medical school--who could blame her, my dad had to work--probably was for the best that my sister and I were shipped off to our grandmother's in Washington DC.  We were newly PD (post divorce) and maybe we were a bit sensitive to being dropped off like that.  Our grandmother promptly signed us up for horseback riding camp (English style) which may have been fun if it weren't 99 degrees and 99 percent humidity.  The smell of horse manure is bad enough without having it wafting around in hot sticky air.  In the end I begged to quit camp because the horse I'd originally been assigned tossed its head around so much I had bad blisters on the palms of my hands and the second horse they gave me stepped on my foot.  That hurt more than a little bit.  In between those horses they put me on a mule until I was more comfortable.  Guess what?  I never was.

So that would have been the end of my horseback riding career except that I made a promise to myself that I would step outside of my box, do things I wouldn't normally do, take risks, and then write a book all about it (which I'm currently about 40% done with).  Horseback riding was one of those things that I had ruled out for myself out of fear.  OK...maybe pain and fear.  And maybe association with feelings of abandonment...Clearly I had spent too many years analyzing the negative emotions involved in riding, and no time at all actually doing what any good horseman/woman will say is the very best way to get past that sort of thing:  Get back in the saddle!  And so I did.

Is it me or does this horse make me look fat?

I even have photo proof.  I rode a beautifully calm and gentle horse named Tango.  When the guide brought him over to me she said, "This is Tango as in 'do you want to...'"

Don't mind if I do, don't mind if I do.