Touring the Badlands and horseback riding

We have been trying to go horseback riding in the morning since Sat. It has rained every morning really hard so that we were unable to go.
Jacob, the owner of the CG, has 18 horses and offers trail rides several times a day for a fee.
The wrangler that he had, quit and there were no rides offered until Sat. Greg, an old friend of Jacob, and his granddaughter showed up Friday night. Greg has been Jacob's on & off wrangler for many years.
Greg is a 57y/o rodeo rider. He was thrown off of his horse and proceeded to break his right leg in 3 places. Hip, knee and ankle. He now has had a right artificial hip for about 2 weeks. He is slowed, but insists on leading the rides by horseback until his granddaughter learns the horses and the trail.
Donna has a 2 y/o total hip and she tried to get on a horse but she was not comfortable for the 1 or 2 minutes she was in the saddle, so she decided not to ride.
This morning the weather was really nice here and so we got to go.
Greg lead out with Ted, then me, Brenda and another family following. We were in a single file arrangement.
We had been on the trail about 20 minutes, when a deer shot out across the pasture spooking Greg's horse, who in turn spooked my horse, who jumped sideways. The saddle was not as tight as it could have been, so when Matthew jumped and jerked sideways, I was thrown sideways dislodging the saddle and throwing me to the ground.
I landed unceremoniously, my left elbow was between the ground and my left ribcage. I haven't had the wind knocked out of me since I was a kid, but this landing surely did this time. My left ribs are sore, but I don't think anything is broken.
I'm glad it was me and not Brenda.

Yesterday, we decided to ride around the Badlands National Park to the west. This area is so beautiful. We took the cameras and the binoculars and went out.
We drove along the roads with many turn outs and we saw many animals. We were glad we brought the binoculars, as we saw some movement in the distance and looked with our glasses. There were 2 bison about 2 or 3 miles away and we got to watch them move toward us.
Then we moved on to Robert's Prairie dog Village. The little buggers had holes in their burrows just a few yards from the road.They have plague, so we were warned to stay in our vehicle, as well as our pets if we had any with us. We got some really good pictures.

We stopped just before we left the park, and saw several female mountain goats with their young. A ranger came by and we were told that there were 60+ kids. They were too far away for good pictures, but we got to watch them with the binoculars.
There has been so much rain here that everything is green. It is supposed to be hot and dry with very little green vegetation. This has been a good year for the fauna in the park.

We decided to go into Wall again to eat lunch. The restaurants in Wall drugs were self serve and very confusing. We decided to try another place that was across the street. Ted and I had a lunch buffet, and the ladies had something from the menu. All of the food was very tasty and filling, so we didn't have any supper.

We got back to the park late in the afternoon. With all of the rain, Ted's truck got very muddy on our sojourn, so we washed it in one of the empty sites. Jacob is very accommodating to our needs.

We have been doing different things around the park such as unplugging a sink in a cabin, helping park some of the RV's and just visiting with new arrivals that Jacob has offered to have us stay 3 days at no cost. We have reservations in Custer on Wed., so we declined. We are intending to ask for free laundry, as we both need to have some clean clothes before we leave.

We played Mexican Train until the bugs tried to carry us away. We played until 10:00pm.
Donna won again.

Saturday evening we went into Interior for church. I have shown the church in previous posts. There were 17 of us incluing the priest. 3 were parishioners and the rest visitors.
With our travels, we get to see many and varied churches, but this is probably the smallest that we have ever been in. I can't imagine how this parish is financially supported, especially in the winter when tourism is at its lowest.

I will post more pictures when the wifi connection is better.

Ta ta for now