Adventure at the Assunpink 2026

 On August 30th, Taylor hosted the annual Assunpink CMO ride. This year, I was just there to assist. The day was a great success!

Bonnie supervises registration.

Taylor started registration at a very reasonable 8am. Mike and I arrived a little bit before that and set up the party tent over the picnic tables.

I've recapped this ride each year since its inception so I won't go nuts with the details. 

We got really lucky and the weather was positively glorious on ride day. I originally chose an August date for this event so I wouldn't be sad about hosting instead of riding. Joke's on me! Apparently this is a great way to manifest beautiful days every year. 

Registration went smoothly with riders trickling in over the course of a few hours. This year, we didn't have any drama. While there were several newcomers, most people seemed to know what they were getting into. We didn't do a formal orienteering mini-clinic and did just fine without it. 

We had roughly 20 riders come out, which is a good turnout for one of these events. The teams were also evenly split between long and short course, which was awesome! It was actually a pretty competitive field.

Jen who I used to catch ride for in my glory days brought a whole crew down for their first attempt at orienteering. That was really heartwarming.

I failed to get a picture of all the teams, but here are some of them!

Sarah and Ranger Joe on Bogart and Chance.

Angela and Surfer mentoring a new CMO rider.

What the Foxtrot representing ;) Sandy, Michele, and Terra. 

Elaina and daughter come every year!

A group of newbies from south Jersey. They had a blast!

Andrea and Denali did the long course as individuals!

Hannah K and her team. She brings new people each year!

Mike assisted with parking, as usual, and did a bang up job cramming all the rigs into the lot. He also manned the grill, cooking up hot dogs for everyone as they came in. 

Parking lot was packed!

Our official parking coordinator.

Taylor did an incredible job with the maps and clues. Everything was very on-theme. I was tickled by the wax seal on the map. 

They even did an overlay to give the maps a Lord of the Rings feel. What I thought was particularly cool was that they were able to add certain key landmarks to the map while keeping it on brand. 

Even the naturally existing clues were presented in a medieval way.

This year's maps and clues were definitely more fun than the ones I've had in the past. I feel like Taylor's creative genius really took this ride to the next level. I'm good at paperwork, event planning, and organization. Taylor singlehandedly brought the fun!

Final clues.

The map. One of the clues was lonely pokeweed. Taylor had the forethought to put a picture of pokeweed on the map to help people out. I'm not sure anyone picked up on it, but I thought it was clever.

How they looked when they were handed out.

Unfortunately, our chapter's ribbon box/banner/etc. all disappeared into the south with Dodie when she moved. I think Taylor has the option to mail ribbons to participants, but I'm not sure where we're at in that process. 

However, Taylor made participation awards that knocked all that out of the park. They were little treasure chests full of horse and human treats, including homemade horse muffins. These were a big hit and we were calling them Happy Meals by the end of the day.

Adorable.

So how did everyone do? 

We got a lot of feedback on the course. It seems like everyone had fun, which is the most important part. 

The general consensus seemed to be that this was a challenging course. I know navigation in the WMA is a factor each year. Even with good maps, it can be hard to figure out which way to go in places. 

Last year, I put up some confidence markers at some key intersections. We did not do that this year. By this point, most people have ridden the WMA at least once, which helps.

With that said, there was a lot of success. 50% of teams on both the long and short courses found all of their objectives. Each objective was found by at least one person. Andrea only found 1 objective before throwing in the towel, but this seemed to be an outlier. The remaining teams averaged success on half the objectives. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the number of objectives found and each team's experience level, which makes sense. 

Overall, I think the course was the perfect mix of doable and challenging. I feel like Goldilocks. The first year, the ride was too hard. The second year, the ride was too easy. This year, the ride was just right.

I'll take it!

It's worth noting that the course was set in about eight miles when we rode it, but the long course teams seemed to do it in about 13. This lined up with the expectations Taylor and I had going into it. Perfect! Nobody complained about it being too long, and none of the short course teams said theirs was too short. Perfect!

I stole some photos of W.T.F. doing their thing out on course.

Terra and Lilac.

Three good mares in a lake.

Of course the words were themed too.

Dragon skull.

Sandy and Tot. 

A good time was had back at the parking lot, both by those of us hosting and those participating in the event. There were even a few family members who came to support their riders and hung out at the picnic tables with us. Bonnie spent the day socializing and met her step goal for the afternoon.

Hosting rides is hard work.

Bonnie finally got to meet Angela. It was love at first sight.

Overall, the day went quickly and smoothly. Before I knew it, everyone was packing up to go home and we were taking down the party tent. 

I was delighted when I logged on later that night and found a ton of positive feedback from various participants. It's always nice to give folks a venue to enjoy their horses.

I am really glad that the pieces fell into place so we could host this ride this year. I was definitely not feeling it when it came time to start planning. It was really lucky that Taylor was available and interested. We wound up making a great team and I suspect this won't be the last time we co-host an event. 

...now I just need to do some nudging on the administrative end. It has been over a month since the ride and results still haven't been posted on the NACMO website. We are definitely seeing some organizational problems in Dodie's absence. I am trying to stay out of it because it's really none of my business, but I am not good at taking a back seat. 

I am contemplating hosting another ride in December, but the idea of having to pull teeth about paperwork has me pumping the brakes. I guess we'll see what happens.

(And that's a wrap on August!)