I’m not as good at writing ride stories as my mother is, but I’m not sure if
she’s going to write one this time. Our trip started out good. Aunt Mary and I
had fun watching the scenery go by from inside the trailer. Until we got to the
part where we had to climb the mountains and she wouldn’t look anymore! As we
all know Mom is a Wal*Mart freak, so of course we stopped at a few of those on
the way out. (Quite a few if I may say so myself. J
) Anyways! I’ll get on with my story now!
The trip out to Nevada left Max a little dehydrated. We were worried about
him for awhile, but Malik was doing fine, so we kept going. We arrived on
Wednesday, got things set up for the horses and slept like logs the whole night.
I don’t know about everyone else, but the elevation did some weird things to my
ears. (Thank god for gum!! J ) On Thursday we did
our usual “Go around” and checked things out, and prerode the trail. Cuz ya know
this was the National Championships!! We checked out the t-shirts and the
completion awards. (Which are awesome!) Then while Mom was talking, Nelson and I
went and checked out the vendors that were there.
We went to dinner and the ride meeting. After such a long haul to get there,
dinner didn’t seem so appetizing. Oah well. The ride meeting was nice. After all
we proved to be the craziest ones there. We won the award for the farthest
travelers. (Which was a nice basket full of Cowboy Magic supplies. Including the
green spot remover, which does miracles on gray horses that sleep in their poo!
J ) We got a chance to check out the saddles that
were the 1 st place division awards. I could tell we were getting strange looks
from other people. “You’re from where?” they would say. “Michigan,” which should
have been perfectly clear by the state embroidered on the back of our
sweatshirts. “No way,” they would say. So I guess we were pretty crazy. (Except
maybe our friends from Illinois! Who honk their horns and flail their arms at
Nelson and make him think there is something wrong with the rig.) But that’s
what makes this sport so awesome, is the people you meet along the way.
Alright, Friday. Early morning, you’ll never guess what happens to us. ( Ya
know we jinx ourselves when say it’ll never happen to us.) Our horses got out of
their corrals. OAH MY GOODNESS! Everyone follows them out into the field they
were in, (Thank God for the people that are brave enough to pound posts into the
ground. As we saw many fences in the state of Nevada!) but it took another
stallion and gelding to get them to stop running away. Which made it easy for me
to grab both of them. We didn’t even want to find a way to fix the mess they had
made with the fence, so we threw them in the trailer for the rest of the night
(a couple hours). We went back to sleep and woke up at 5 o’clock Nevada time,
and 8 o’clock Michigan time. Which didn’t bother us, cuz it was like sleeping
in!
We originally had plans to paint some flames on our horses butts, but because
we were out in the middle of nowhere, the sun hit the mountains and went down
quicker than we thought and it was too dark for us. Oah well. I guess it
wouldn’t have mattered, the numbers that were written earlier that day were
rubbed off by the blankets anyways. So we pulled the horses out of the trailer
and saddled them up. Max drank good that night, which eased my worries that were
brought on by the trip. He must have known it was time to get down to business.
We were ready to go early, because I knew we had some hills that the boys were
going to want to run up. We had about twenty minutes to warm up and a guy that
was taking pictures asked if he could take some of Max in the moonlight. Of
course I said yes, because I thought they’d be awesome. (It was a full moon and
everything! I haven’t seen them yet, but hope to check that out soon as we get
home!) So for the first ten minutes we were being photographed.
Then it was off to the starting gate! (Sounds a little like the race track!)
Anyways! We met a few other people before we started off! Of course, because Mom
knows half of the people in this sport by name, at least! Then the trail was
open, half of the group flew out of the gate and some others stayed behind
waiting for everyone to go out. I think we started off in the middle of the pack
somewhere. Being so dark out that morning, I was glad that we had preridden some
of the trail. Both of the boys started off strong, wanting to run up every hill
they saw. Which doesn’t go over too well when someone is in front of you and
stops half way up the hill. ;) Gee who could that be?… I DON’T KNOW!! J
The trail was beautiful, when I could stop chattering my teeth long enough to
take a look. Being able to see the sunrise and the moon set at the same time was
an awesome sight to see. (Making me remember painting the scenery in Aunt Mary’s
trailer.) Finally the sun started peaking over the mountain tops. (Which warmed
us up some, but it was still cold in the shade. NOTE FROM MAGGIE: WHAT SHADE,
JENNY?) We did eat a lot of dust a good portion of the ride, but we got away
from that problem as soon as possible. There weren’t a lot of places where
Nelson and Aunt Mary could pit us on this trail. Which I understand, because
half of the time I didn’t even know where we were at either.
We started out in a decent sized group of people, which made eating the dust
even grittier. I couldn’t wear sunglasses, because the dust would collect on the
inside and I couldn’t see. So I didn’t wear sunglasses, which made my contacts
irritated. (Which shows that ya can’t win for losin’! J ) We came up to the first vet check with a group of
people. They all got off their horses, so I figured it wasn’t that far away.
Even though we could see the check area, we still walked at least a half mile
before we got there. Which made me feel foolish after I realized it. We came
into the vet check and did our thing. The boys ate good and drank. They were
both looking great. (Out checks were half an hour and camp checks were a full
hour.) So we were off again! Whooping and hollering off into the next part of
our hundred miler ride.
Still eating dust every once in awhile we made our way across (up, down,
whatever) the terrain. As we were told earlier about the wild mustangs, we kept
an eye out for those also. And watched all the wildlife we could find. (Not a
lot during the day!) We rode through some beautiful country that’s for sure. At
one point we had to cross a SMALL stream, which the boys decided they should
jump over. (But will ride through raging, 6 foot rivers at home. Go figure!
J ) The loop back to camp took what seemed like
forever, but we eventually made it. ( Making us climb mountains where we could
see the campground wasn’t fair…L What tricksy
humans! (NOTE FROM MAGGIE: Jenny has watched Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers
too many times!) We arrived at camp and everything was going great, the boys ate
and drank and pulsed right down. The vet checked over Max and thought he saw
something in his LEFT front leg. I thought Max had felt great all morning, but
the vet said it wasn‘t consistent. So then we left and let the boys eat and
drink at the “Pit Bull’s” truck. Then we got ready to go again.
