We woke at 5:30 in order to be on the road by 6:00 to provide us some “getting lost” time in finding M Diamond Ranch. Katharina is going for a 3-hour ride on Cinnamon into the hills near Sedona with Jackie as her guide. The cowboy on hand took Kat over to a stand where it’s easier to mount horses and made the final adjustments to the saddle so our niece would have a pleasant ride. Without fanfare, they quickly moved out of the corral and disappeared into the thicket.

I’m calling this one “German Woman on Cinnamon among the Cactus.”

Caroline and I returned to the ranch after breakfast around 9:30, and although it was getting hot, there were no signs of Jackie and Katharina. Then, shortly before 10:00, I see their heads emerging out of the heavy brush up the trail, and I’m thrilled that Kat stayed out for the duration of the scheduled ride. We hear about her horse being a well-behaved ride, that she passed on cantering, saw some petroglyphs along the trail, and generally had a great time riding a western saddled horse out in the desert on a summer day. Normally, she rides English saddle in Germany, where the desert is an exotic concept, and she’d never been on a horse for three consecutive hours. The young woman might look young for her age, and she can definitely work on her communication skills (most of us can), but she can be tough when she chooses.

Later in the day, it was time to head back to the Foothills Recreation and Aquatic Center in Glendale for another practice round with the Desert Judo group. The only problem was that others hadn’t arrived yet, and things didn’t look good for the practice happening tonight, so we went to dinner instead. Over at Claim Jumper Restaurant, after an already impossibly large meal, Kat felt intrigued enough by the monster-sized chocolate cake that she simply had to try it. Most of it came home with us; I wonder if we’ll still be looking at it in our fridge after she leaves Saturday morning?