Charleston to Corinna Ride With the TROT Club

Today Cierra and I headed north to Charleston to do the "long", 25+ miles, ride with the TROT club (Trail Riders of Today) My truck is still in the repair shop so we were not able to bring our own horses. My friend, Amy Beem, very generously offered her mules to let Cierra and I to ride. I have good friends! We gladly accepted the offer. It was a chilly, breezy and cloudy day but a fine riding day. We had to get up early as we had to meet Amy at her house at 7:00 am. It's a little over an hour drive to her house so Cierra and Pam met met at the Exit 46 truck stop in Richmond at 5:30 am. I had worked Friday night so not gotten to bed until 2:30 am so only had 2 hrs. of sleep. Cierra does have a drivers permit and brought it along in case she needed to drive going up or coming home. I had to swing by Upper Pond Stable and pick up my mule saddle as I wanted to use that if it looked like it fit Amy's mule. Pam bought me breakfast at D&D, wonderful woman that she is and we were on our way. We got to Amy's in good time and helped her catch horses and mules and loaded our things into her trailer and we were on our way. On the way, Amy stopped and picked up Michele Cozart and her lovely Fjord mare, Luna. The group all met at Susan Manson's house. Then we all went up to Charleston where we were starting. This was going to be a one way ride so we had people that came to drive the trailers back to Sue's house. I was riding Amy's new mule, Annabelle. Cierra was riding Harvey. Harvey is one of Anthony McAllister's mules that Amy had on lease for the summer. Cierra rode Harvey when we went to Illinois earlier this year. We had 12 riders today.

Judy McPheter's on Lydia, Cierra on Harvey and Amy Beem on Washburn

Judy McPheter's on Lydia

Cierra on Harvey, Amy on Washburn and Caleigh Wright on Finnigan

Michele Cozart on Luna, Kim LaRochelle on Chip, Cierra on Harvey,
Amy on Washburn and Judy on Lydia

When we first started out, we hit some muddy spots that had really been churned up by ATVs. We tried to go around one spot following someone elses trail and got into a real mess of bad, bad mud. Amy was leading with me and Cierra and Sue behind. It was really scary and the others were able to turn back. We all made it though and all horses, mule and riders were unhurt. That was the only bad piece of trail we had. One of the riders horses was having a hard time with being in such a large group so we didn't ride too fast the first part of the ride. That woman didn't want to keep holding us up though and had someone come pick up her and her horse at our lunch break. Going along one of the corn fields the trail was bordered with a long stretch of burdock plants. Annabelle, and several other horses, got their tails full of them and their tails were sticking their tack or other horses tack. Kim's horse, Reiny got them high up and on the underside of his tail and didn't like that at all! We all had to pick the burrs out of their tails. We stopped for lunch at the Garland fairground. It's a nice spot with lots of grass for the equines to graze.

Cierra on Harvey, Sue, Caleigh and Jean McDonald

Lisa Rappleya and Judy McPheters

Cindy on Annabelle

Amy Beem on Washburn, Caleigh Wright on Finnigan,
Cierra Baxter on Harvey and Kim LaRochelle on Reiny

After lunch, we picked up the pace a bit and did some nice long trots and a few fun canters up some long stretches of dirt road. A wrong turn was taken (or a turn was not taken) that we need to take to get us to the rails to trails trail and we ended up riding down into Dexter by the school to get onto the trail. So, a bit of paved road that wasn't planned on. All the horses were good about it though so we had no troubles. Cierra and Harvey were having a bit of a personality conflict as the ride went on so Cierra and Amy switched mounts. Cierra really enjoyed riding Amy's Morgan gelding Washburn and he was a good boy for her. Cierra got to experience the big extended Morgan trot which she thought was pretty cool. Annabelle was a lot of fun to ride. She is a Standardbred mule. She has a lot of get up and go and is solid and steady on the trail. She did spook just once on the rails to trails trail. A dirt bike came by us and didn't slow down much. One of those small one with the loud high pitched sound. She started to edge towards the ditch and I have her a pretty hard kick on that side to keep her from going into it and it startled her and she threw in some crow hops. I sat it out and we were fine. I really enjoyed riding her and it was good to be on a mule again. We only had one "incident" and that was within 100 feet of our trailers. Where we were parked, there us a power line that runs though and the poles are being replaced. So, there were piles of poles and big equipment we had to ride by. A few of the horses were hesitating about going though so I led the way with Annabelle. She was cautions but willing. Then, I heard a commotion behind me and turned to look and saw Amy on the ground. She was ok, after a few minutes to catch her breath as she hit the ground pretty hard. What happened was that a mini horse was in a paddock behind one of the piles of poles and came running into view unexpectedly. That startled Washburn and he spun which set off Harvey who spun and then bolted a short distance. Cierra managed to stay on Washburn as he only spun. But the bolt was Amy's undoing. In any case, Amy was ok so it was a successful ride all in all. 

      

Cierra on Washburn

After the ride, we had a wonderful pot luck supper. Pam was kind enough to put together a pasta salad for Cierra and I to contribute. I definitely over ate but enjoyed every bit of it. Such a nice way to end the day after a long ride. The picture below is Michele Cozart's Fjord pony Luna sleeping in her hay. 

Luna sleeping in her hay

Ride with Mary-Jo and Toro

Riding to West Bowdoin and Scary Tee Shirts

Marie had a busy day. First it was the farrier in the morning to put some nice new shoes on her feet. Then in the afternoon it was the equine dentist to get her teeth floated. She slept through the farrier work. She is not so happy about getting her teeth done but Steve Akeley is soooooo good with handling horses that he quickly had her standing quietly to have the work done. And this winter is going to be a bit easier I think. Fred traded his motorcycle for a plow truck. A much needed piece of equipment on the farm. 

Cierra and I got out for a nice long ride today. I didn't have any specific plan in mind on where to go so one trail led to a "oh, lets try this trail" to another, "lets try this trail". We started out by crossing the bridge by my house and going out on the trail behind my neighbors house. I haven't done this trail in a while and it seems no one is using it anymore as it was a little hard to follow and I did lose it once, but managed to get back on it after a bit of searching. This trail leads us out on the Starbird Corner Rd. We went up that road and at the end I decided to ride out towards West Bowdoin on the multi use trail. Tink hesitated about leading across one of the water crossings.  Cierra patiently but persistently requested she lead through and she did. We came out at the Wheeler farm. Cierra in Tinkerbell had been leading most of the time. There are some cows, sheep, ducks, and dogs at the farm and Tink decided she would rather follow Marie though here. We went straight across the West Rd and from that trail, I took the side short cut over to the Allan farm fields. That piece is a little muddy but quite a short stretch so worth taking anyway. We took the trail from the Allan farm over to the West Jim Rideout Road trail. That is such a lovely section of trail. Tink had a boot coming off so we just removed it and carried it to the first stream crossing as the velcro was full of mud and needed to be rinsed out. The footing was all really nice to the water crossing so not a problem. From that trail I took the trail that leads towards the Hill's sand pit. I don't know those trail all that well but figured I'd manage to get through and I did. There are such nice trails out there and I did get out to the sand pit and then remembered the short trail to Stephanie Hill's house. She is a fellow horse owner and a very nice woman so we rode up to see if she was home and say hi. She was home and hard at work around the farm getting some stuff ready for winter. We chatted for a few minutes. She has some hunting dogs and they all got barking and baying when we first rode up and that made Tinkerbell a little nervous. But, she didn't do anything bad. From Stephanie's house we had to ride the paved road home, about 3 miles. They are fairly quiet roads and Tink and Marie are both so good with traffic that it's not a problem. We did come across a scary white tee shirt laying on the road that Tink was quite sure was going to eat her though! Silly girl. We were out about 4 hrs. and had a wonderful ride. 

Lovely Bogs

 The weather has been so lovely for riding lately. AND the deer fly are gone! Cierra and I went out for a couple hours today. We rode down to one of the bogs we go by often. I've never ridden right down to it but the woods are clear and easy to ride though even without a trail. It was so pretty down there. The pictures don't even come close to doing justice to how pretty it is.