Koster Trail Ride

This year's Koster Trail Ride took place in a different location. It's always nice to get the opportunity to ride in a different location, although I do like the standard Koster ride.

That morning I did chores and put halters on Rain and King so that it would be easier for me to catch them. I think I must have taken them for suprise when I didn't require them to walk away from their breakfast.

When it was time, I caught both Rain and King and loaded them up for the quick half hour drive to Madison. Once to Mom and Dad's, we unloaded the horses and dad saddled up King so that we could hit the road again to get to the base of the trail head.

It was gorgeous riding. There was only 15 riders on this ride. Most were at graduation parties, etc. But having only 15 riders really did make for easy and fun riding. We didn't have to worry about people and their riding skills.

We actually ended up taking two trips. The first one we headed out and just road around a couple of pastures. I got lost a few times (lost as in not knowing where the trailers were at). We rode around for about an hour or so and then headed back to the trailers. Nothing too harry for riding purposes. I did hear one saddle club member talk about getting rid of his older mare that is going blind. And of course, stupid me didn't pipe up and ask more questions about the mare. This family has a tendance to get rid of any horse that isn't viable to them and will dump the horse at any loose horse sale without a care to the horse's next phase of life. I may just have to try and get ahold of them and ask what they want for the mare or if they would consider giving her to me for only a few bucks. I guess we'll see how it all pans out.

We sat around the trailers for about an hour just chit chatting and enjoying everyone's company. I enjoyed listening to everyone else talk. I'm rather quiet around big groups of people. It's just my nature. But it's always fun listening to others talk about horses.

We saddled up again and rode around again. The second trip out was much more difficult and more fun. I wish we could have ridden it backwards. It would have been completely different backwards than going the way we went. We had many ravins to cross and hills to climb. Unfortunately Rain thought that he should run up the hills instead of walk. I tried to run him around on Friday but apparently it wasn't enough to wear him down to stay calm. He always wants to be in the front and Saturday's ride really got him in a sweat when I made him stay at the back of the pack where it's safest.

But overall the second portion of the ride was very enjoyable. I wish we could have more rides like that. Just a few people to talk with and terrain that really makes you and the horse pay attention to your surroundings. Dont' get me wrong, riding gravel means we can really cover some ground but riding through hills and across ravins really makes for some breathtaking rides.

Once we got back to the trailers after the second trip out we hung out for quite awhile. I'd wanted to leave right away but ended up sitting around listening to people talk. We didn't get out of their until much later. Dad and I both wanted to get home sooner than we did. We missed seeing the Preakness Stakes but we did get to see the recap.

We won't attend another trail ride until the first weekend in June when we head up to Sinia. The Sinia ride is always pretty but it's a bit long without as many breaks as we are used to. I need to do a bit more riding before I'm ready for the Sinia ride.

We have a bunch of stuff going on in the next two weeks so hopefully I can squeeze in a few rides on Rain, King, Chaos, and soon Maverick. I'm expecting a call any time now that Maverick will be ready to come home. I'm a bit nervous. I've gotten used to him not being here. I have to figure out how to rearrange the herd so that I can mess with Maverick and not change the herd dynamics too much.

I was hoping to introduce Sam to Bob, Rain, and Chaos. Not sure we'll have time today or not. We still have to finish up getting the rest of the manure out of the horse pens. There's always something going on or something that needs to be done.

I like staying busy but I'd sure like a couple of days to finish up some of our major projects so that we can tackle the big fencing job. I think we are actually going to change our focus. After messing around in the horse pens, it's become very obvious that we have to do some serious fencing in the horse pens before we face dividing the big pasture. I'm also changing my perspective of where the girls will go this summer. If we can get some serious fencing done, I could have them on the backside of Borderlands instead of close to the road. Having a blind horse near a road is never a good thing, so if this other idea works out, we could have even more land for the girls to graze. All in due time I suppose.