A view between the ears: Camping

This year we went to Skillman for horse camping. The trip there was easy on the truck as we were only 3700 feet. Last year the trip to Wrights Lake was too much for our truck-almost didn't make it. This year the trip was shorter and the uphill grade was not so steep and long. The smoke from the American Fire wasn't bad. It was very slight in the morning and then it blew away during the day.

In my last blog I wrote about ponying horses and the problems/resolutions that came up. The first day we went on a short ride on trails around camp. I ponyed Sky off of Zoe. The combination worked fine. The trail we chose had alot of hairpin turns in it, but we did ok. The next morning we went for another ride. This one wasn't as fun. We took our dog camping. In the past we always had 2 dogs at horse camping and we left them back at camp and they were fine. Last November we had to put one of our dogs down leaving just one for this trip. We didn't want to leave just one dog back at camp by herself. So we took her. The first day she was fine. The second day she caused some problems. The dog is 1/2 healer so she liked to stay behind the string of horses. On the second day she must have done something to spook Sky. We were on a narrow trail. Sky starting running up on Zoe and spinning (as I'm holding on to his rope). Because Sky was spinning, Zoe thought it would be a good idea to do the same. Now I'm riding/ponying 2 spinning horses at the same time. All I could do was hold on and yell at them. They all stopped, I got everyone turned around and we continued on. Not fun. Then Zoe and Sky decided it was time to eat. Every 20 steps or so one or the other would stop and eat. It's not easy for me to control that behavior with 2 horses at the same time. So we got off the narrow trail and that took care of the eating problems. At that point we stayed on a wide road and went back to camp. So the ponying combination went fine, I just didn't plan on the dog causing problems.

Once the 3rd rider showed up I no longer had to pony a horse. When Zoe was little I would pony her everywhere and as time went on I got tired of it. Ponying horses is something I can do but it isn't my favorite thing to do.

We went on a nice long ride that afternoon. We took the Hallelujah Trail out from camp, met up with the Pioneer Trail by Hwy 20 and rode back to camp. Zoe was in the lead on the Hallelujah Trail. She did pretty good leading on a trail she had never been on before. There were alot of hairpin turns on this trail and it was no problem for her. We mostly walked and did very little trotting. All the horses were excited when we first started and it took quite a while for them to settle down so walking seemed the best choice. But after a while they calmed down and trotting was ok. We almost took the wrong trail to get back home. I was glad I had the map with us. It was a pretty good map-for those 2 trails. Not sure about the other trails. Those were the only 2 trails we traveled on the whole time we were there.

The next day we went on a short ride in the morning as we had family visiting later that day. It was good to see everyone again. No one wanted to ride and we were having too much fun visiting. The next day was our go home day. A short ride in the morning was all we had time for.