Farmerette and I packed up our gear, horse and road cart and headed north. Each Memorial Day weekend, we travel north to meet up with our harness club for a fun weekend of driving, campfires and good food. We have friends that we look forward to seeing each year up there. The group of people that bring their horses and carts are very knowledgeable horse people who take very good care of their horses. They care deeply for their horses and all are well fed, well trained, and enjoy the atmosphere of being out for a new adventure. No drunken poker run trail riders here. Which is nice. We don't do those rides.
After arriving, we made sure our mare was settled in her outdoor corral, then unpacked the harness and cart. We set up our table with our camping gear and made the gooseneck of the trailer into our home away from home. A cooler well-stocked with food and a coleman stove are enough to get us through the weekend. After getting camp set up, we had time to get in a couple of games of badminton. We had wanted to harness up for a quick drive before dark, but it had started to rain lightly, so we decided to see what the weather held for the next day.
And what a beautiful day for driving it was! I saddled up and took an early ride just to settle my mare down while Farmerette made a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. Once we had finished up breakfast and tidied up the camp, we hitched up and headed out on the northbound trail with some friends and their horses. What a blast! Beautiful!
The trails are nice and wide, accomodating the width of the wheels of our carts. Whenever we would slow down and give the horses a break at the walk, we'd get the camera out and snap some pictures of the scenery around us. The county maintains this area of 4,000 acres. Some of the old timers refer to it as the pine barrens or bird sanctuary. Back in the 40's to mid 70's, this used to be a bird dog trial and training area. The geography is different here than our usual pine and oak forest around home. This area is quite open with scrubby oak and an occaisional small pine. The habitat is a bit different from home here also, but the bear, coyote, deer and wolf are frequent visitors also - just like home.
The black horse above is ours, while our friends ahead of us are driving an arab mare with their spotted pony following behind. We call it "ponying". This is a good way to exercise more than one horse and for getting a young horse used to heading out away from camp, accomodating them to the rigors of what they will encounter on the trail. We had left our pony home, but would like to bring him along on a future trip.
After an enjoyable weekend of driving and just plain fun, we packed up and headed back down the road in the direction of home. It's so hard to leave such a beautiful place, but we are so thankful that the state and county maintain such a nice, clean place to camp and enjoy our horses. We hope that it will remain accessible for many years to come!
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