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<< Thanks for the grins!! I too have been in that situation....gotta watch
out
for those 'ole frail fuddy duddys' that look like they couldn't walk across
camp - let alone ride (or should I say 'race') a 50 or 100 miler!!!!!!!
They'll kick your butt every time!!!!! >>
Ah, but SOMETIMES we greenhorns can get one up on the ole trail experts. A
few years ago a friend of mine and I decided to go for a weekends horse
camping at a park about 15 miles from where I live. Since the park WAS only
15 miles away, we chose to ride there, rather than trailer. The fact that
niether one of us owned a trailer helped this decision enourmously. However,
my long-suffering husband got "volunteered" into delivering our camping stuff
to the park that we need not ride encumbered.
Well, since hubby was delivering all camping gear in our pickup truck,
neither Sue nor I saw reason to go without any little item we might possibly
need over our 3 days and nights in the wilderness. Two tents, three large
and one small Coleman coolers, camp stoves, cooking utensils, sleeping bags,
changes of clothing, hay, grain, horse sheets and blankets--etc., etc.,
etc.,--all were dutifully dropped off by my hubby at the chosen campsite.
Sue and I went and set up camp, then rode our horses to the park. (Sue
boarded her horse at my farm.) This was Memorial Day weekend, camp ended up
quite crowded--the guy who set up camp next to us is sort of a legend on the
Michigan Trails--not an endurance rider, but a horse camper and trailrider
from way, way back--some say he helped blaze some of the original trails into
the state up from Ohio! He looks old enough, at any rate. And a first class
horseman.
I've never been much of a picket line tie-er. Should of let hubby do it,
he ties good ones, but I tied my own this weekend. The first evening I was
up at the campsite of some friends of mine who were there that weekend, and
hear all kinds of commotion down at my camp, Sue is yelling for me and
everything. Go running down there, and sure enough, my picket line was down
and my Quarter/arab gelding Tash might have been in trouble, all tangled up
and such, except our ancient cowboy friend rushed over and saved the day--and
tied me a new and better picket line.
So I'm thanking him profusely and he starts giving me this friendly
little lecture about how careful a person must be with a horse and how with a
horse it is not a matter of "if" they will get into trouble but when . .
.etc., etc. Cowboy is talking to me as if I were a little 4-H girl with her
first horse, but you know, he really meant it all well so I took it in that
spirit and just kept agreeing with all he said and thanking him again and
again and acting as if everything he told me was brand new information.
Finally he looks around our campsite, then does a double take, then
says, "Say, where is your rig?"
I answered (not at the time realizing how this would sound), "Oh, we just
rode in to camp. I only live 15 miles away."
Cowboy looks taken aback, then scans the campsite again, taking in the
two large tents, the Coleman coolers, the cooking equipment, horse gear, etc.
etc.--you could all but see him picturing a Coleman cooler tied to the back
of my saddle!--then, shaking his head in utter amazement, he sort of shuffled
away--but gave one look back at us which all but said, "Shoot, ah don't have
ta tell these gals NUTHIN'!--imagine, RODE into camp, loaded down like that!
Now ah've seen it all!"
Trish & "pretty David" (who has not yet learned to carry a Coleman cooler--)
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