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