Hurray! There's horse pictures!

Yup.  I brought my USB cord from home and plugged my camera into my computer at work and voila!  Pictures!  The ones I've been promising since last week.  Sorry it took so long to get them up, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Okay.  So.  Here's the story I said that went along with these pictures.  I found a Facebook page about the Salt River herd and on it was some locations to find the horses that I didn't know about so I decided to head out to one of the locations in hopes of spotting them.  When I got to the river, though, there was no sign of them.  I was bummed, to say the least.  I might have hung around a bit to wait and see if they showed up, but there were signs all over the place stating you needed a Tonto Pass if you planned to park your car and I hadn't been able to get one so I didn't want to stay in one place too long and potentially get a ticket.  So I left and got back out on the road, which led me to my discovery...as the road curved around towards the Beeline Highway, I happened to look over and...O.M.F.G!!!!!  A BIG herd.  But I didn't stop right away.  Don't ask me why, but I didn't.  I got out on the Beeline heading back south towards Fountain Hills and where I'd seen the other herds but I kept thinking about the big one I'd just seen and how there was a nice big place to park on the side of the road so I got turned around and went back.  Because I didn't want to startle them, I parked a little ways down the road and got out to walk in on foot.  They were in a little small gulley and there was a wire fence near the road so I just stayed up on the road.  There were a couple of youngsters.  This foal and its mom were a little ways away from the herd...

They were more towards where I'd parked so I got pictures of them first.  They were just hanging out.  Didn't seem too disturbed by my presence.  I tried to be as quiet as I could and they didn't even twitch.  Then I went to check out the rest of the herd and I saw my first greys.  I'd seen pictures of them, but had only seen chestnuts and bays up until that point so I was quite excited to finally see some greys...

Again, I didn't want to disturb them so I took a bunch of pictures then left them to their eating.  I was smiling soooo big that I didn't care when some idiot pulled off the road east of me then honked when they drove by.  I went back by two more times during the day and the 2nd time they were still there, but the 3rd time they'd left, but that was okay since I'd seen them already and had plenty of pictures.  I tell you what, though, that was such an amazing experience!  They all looked healthy and decently fed.  There's plenty for them to eat out there.

Usually when I'm off work for the day and go out and about, I try to find domestic horses to shoot, too.  I usually find a place that looks like it has horse property then follow different roads.  Sometimes I get lucky and find horses near the fence and sometimes there's no horses or they're too far away.  I try to find horses that I can shoot through the fence without getting out of my car because I don't want the owners to think I'm harassing their horses, but sometimes that's not always possible and I'm getting bolder about getting out of my car so I can shoot over or through a fence.  Most of the time the horses ignore me...

but every now and then I encounter ones that are friendly and come over looking for attention or snacks...

Don't worry...I don't feed them or touch them.  I know better than to touch horses that don't belong to me and the chestnut on top is at a show barn so I wouldn't want something happening to him just because I couldn't keep my hands to myself.  hahaha.  Both photos were shot from the inside of my car.

Well, there you have it.  Finally, huh?  I hope you enjoy the pictures.  I'm off work tomorrow again so I'll be out hunting.  This time I'm going to get a Tonto Pass because not only do I want to be able to safely hang out at the river in case there's horses there, but I don't want to have to worry about encountering a Sheriff's deputy like I did last time.  He was just sitting there and probably not paying any attention to me, but why risk it?  Happy Wednesday!