Blogger Trail Ride- the good, the bad, and the almost ugly

On the way in

The much anticipated trail ride is over now, and it was a interesting weekend. As you can see in the photo above, we were in some lovely and wild country, and the weather held out for us; just as we were leaving the rain came, but it was welcome as it kept the dust down on the 40 kilometers of gravel road.

As the title of the post suggests, things didn't go totally smoothly for me. I'll get to the good part first, and finish with more good parts, as we all like a happy ending.

The best part was getting to meet Crystal, from Ranch Riding blog, and her friend Charlene, with their horses Bailey and Ricky. They were great company, and their horses were well behaved.... not like a certain black stallion, but we'll get to that later....

Dave and Janice were there; they brought 7 horses including some young ones that were there just to get experience in the mountains. Dave spends a lot of time in the mountains with his horses, and they are big stout boys that he can use to pack game out. Janice brought her 3 Morgan mares.

Getting into the bad part, on the way in, I was following Janice, and Crystal was following me, and about 3 miles from camp I couldn't see her in my mirrors any more; I went slowly to see if she would catch up, but when she didn't I figured something must have gone wrong. This is a narrow road and I couldn't turn truck and trailer around, so I drove to the camp and sent Dave back in Janice's pickup to go check on them. He found them walking; Crystal's trailer had 2 flat tires on the same side. He brought them to camp, then they took Dave's truck and trailer to pick up the horses, and I lent them my spare tire, which Dave put on, and they limped their rig into camp.

This was all Friday night, and we had to come up with a plan to fix this- remember, we were an hour off the highway up in the wilderness. So the next morning, Charlene went for a trail ride with Dave and Janice, and Crystal and I went to Cranbrook with the flat tires to get some new ones. We went to OK Tire, and the service was excellent: half an hour later, and a few hundred dollars lighter, Crystal had 3 brand new tires and a rim to replace the one that got bent.

Dave putting the new tires on

We got back to camp in time to go on an afternoon ride, as the rest of the crew had returned from the morning ride.

Now we get to the almost ugly part. Beamer. I have been working on his "stallion" manners, getting after him if he dropped when he is around other horses. And he was doing a lot of that, so when I saddled him up and he kept hanging it out, I got after him- all of which got him upset.

Crystal and Charlene starting up the trail

We started out on the trail, and I figured the work would get his mind off his hormones and he'd line out and be good. Wrong. He was so busy paying attention to Crystal's mare- I found out later that she was in heat, but that is NO excuse for bad behavior on Beamer's part!- that he wasn't paying attention to where he was going. He refused to walk over muddy creek crossings; and he has never refused before, he usually goes carefully wherever I ask him to.

Everyone else, having a good ride!

It got to the point that I didn't want to ride him anymore,I figured that if he couldn't pay attention to where he was putting his feet he wasn't safe to ride; so we went back to camp. I was pretty disheartened, and considered packing up and going home the next morning. But Janice came up with a plan, bless her heart. I'll get to that in a minute.

So now we get back to the good! We had two great evenings in camp, with lots of good food, sharing stories and playing with the dogs- more dogs than people!

Tucker and Kali playing tug'o'war with a stick

There were another couple camped there too, and they had a border collie- which I found out was related to mine, he was a son of Tess's grandpa. There is a large corral there that an outfitter built, and Saturday morning after the other couple left, Dave and Janice put their horses in it; they had high-lined them in the trees Friday night.

Plenty of room, and plenty of collies!

They used hobbles on some of them, and Crystal and Charlene were able to turn their horses in with the others. Beamer had his own pen that I set up using my horse trailer as part of it.

This is where Reba spent all her time

It's a pretty good camp , complete with an outhouse, and the river right next to it.

We all used tents

I set my hammock up too, but Charlene and I were the only ones that used it; Tess had to climb in with me, and Crystal got a photo of that.

Sunday morning, after a great communal effort at breakfast- bacon, sausage patties, eggs, refried potatoes and carrots left over from supper, and lots of good strong coffee, we saddled up. I used a different plan with Beamer. I chose not to reprimand him on the dangling issue, because I wanted to keep his mind quiet. We went with Janice's plan, which was for me to ride behind Dave on his gelding Indy, and for the other three horses to ride just a little farther back at first. This worked really well, Beamer behaved quite well, except he still wouldn't cross the muddy little creeks unless I got off him.

Dave on Indy

We rode along the river and up through a meadow where I saw a wolf track in the mud. All the horses did well at crossing the river, which we did numerous times, and mine was the only horse that had issues with the little mud crossings. We stopped at some cabins that belong to the outfitter whose corral we were using at camp, and took a nice break.

Crystal and Janice(on Mattie) coming in to the rest stop.

You will have to visit Janice and Crystal's blogs for more photos of the great scenery there; mine were blurry, not sure why. I did get this one of the horses tied to the trees there.

This is the saddle I borrowed, if fit Beamer and me really well!

On the way back, Beamer got a little footsore about a half mile from camp; up till then he had been doing really well barefoot, but we did have a lot of rocky ground with all the river crossings. So I plan on buying a set of boots for him for trips like this, and any input I can get from you bloggers will be appreciated.

We broke camp, and I had to get this shot of the Alberta girls stylin' their boots and shorts.

Cute boots!

Speaking of footwear, all us girls had the same idea of what to wear as camp shoes!

From left to right- Charlene, Crystal, me and Janice.

Dave was a really big help, he did all the work with taking off and putting on tires, and his expertise with the horses and trails was much appreciated. In this photo, he is ponying Janice's mare Jade on her very first time crossing the river- which she did as well as if she had done it a hundred times.

You can see how rocky the river crossings are.

All in all, it was a successful first effort, I think Crystal and Charlene enjoyed coming to our neck of the woods and seeing some of the lovely back country here. We plan on doing this again next year, likely with a different location as there are so many beautiful places to see and experience. We will pick a different weekend though, probably one week earlier, so that some of you who couldn't come this year will be able to go next year.

Also, we thought it would be great if other bloggers would like to host a blogger trail ride in their part of the country, like the one over at Gun Diva's blog. It's a great way to meet the folks that we are reading about, and their horses.