Moonlight Escapades

 Sometimes, tragedy strikes and a friend needs a distraction. There's nobody better than horse people to come together at exactly such a time. Besides, we were due for a night ride. This is the story of a random Thursday night.

Nothing to see here.

Don't Go Chasing... Thunderstorms

 Me to my boss on a random Friday: How do you feel about me taking a half day for no reason except that I don't want to be here?
My boss: Go for it. You've earned it.
Me immediately after:

HSB On A Glorious Spring Day

 It is raining. Again (still?) It's honestly fine. I could use the slowdown for a change. (Although I'm not sure hauling Booger to sorting, then Lucy to roping yesterday really counts as slowing down.) 

[redacted]

Instead, let's take a moment to reflect on a truly beautiful Sunday ride I had with Sandy last month. 

Double Saddle Time

 It's almost June and I'm still blogging about April. Oh my.

Two days after our Stokes adventure, I met up with Sam to babysit her baby mustang on her first off property trail ride since she came home from the trainer. Then, Sandy reached out to me and I joined her for a sunset ride from the airport on her mares. It was a glorious day.

Baby's first boardwalk!

I do love to borrow Fina.

Peeping Pollen at Round Valley

Well, since I'm sick and we canceled our fun camping trip to Fair Hill this weekend, I might as well blog about some recent adventures.

I mentioned in my monthly recap that I've been helping Sandy with ponying Tot. We started at the Galentine's Day play date at Hannah's in February. I took Tot for a loop with Lucy at Finn Park at the beginning of April. A few days later, we met up at Round Valley. I brought Booger. Sandy brought both her girls so she could practice ponying Tot. 

I spent April legging Booger back off after her time off, and this was a perfect leg stretcher. We did a little over seven miles at a nice easy pace, and everyone enjoyed themselves. 

Loaner Ponies

 After the LD, I gave Lucy the week off. I am also giving Booger some down time to let her splint rest. Going from riding almost every day to pretty much not riding at all probably would have made me stir crazy. Fortunately, Sandy is a wonderful friend and has two lovely ponies! She generously shared both Fina and Tot with me last week.

Double Trouble

 Sandy and I got together on Sunday. 

There was some trail riding.

There were some shenanigans.

Inaugural Shiver in the Pines CMO

 I stubbornly hosted my second NACMO ride in the face of an oncoming winter storm. It was aptly named Shiver in the Pines.

Long course map because I'm quite proud of how these turned out.

First Ride of 2025

 I am definitely still in hibernation mode and trying to give myself permission to lay low since it's winter, but we got the year off to a good start. Sandy and I agreed on New Year's Eve that we should ring in 2025 by riding, but we didn't make any plans. The next morning, we touched base and decided to meet in High Bridge to do the Columbia Trail. Hannah and Taylor joined us on Merlin and Roger respectively. Originally, we had scouted out some other trails around the corner, but everything was a bit of a muddy mess, and we decided it might be best to pick a place we knew on a day when most people would be home. (Shenanigans that might lead to accidental trespassing are generally best left to non-holidays.) We ended up doing a little over eight miles and it was wonderful.

Good footing, good friends, good fun.

Last Ride of 2024

 I was out of PTO for the year, which meant working both Christmas Even and New Year's Eve this year. On New Year's Eve, however, our bosses let us go at 2pm. It just so happened that Sandy also got let out at two. This meant we had a chance to get one more ride in together. We decided to meet at 3pm at Deer Path Park for one last meeting of the Bad Girls Club for the year. I think Sandy and I rode more miles together in 2024 than any other year, and I was very happy to close out a year of good riding with one of my favorite people.

Goodbye, 2024.

Back to back Round Valley Trips

 I really need to start consolidating. We're a week into the new year and I'm still blogging about December. Sandy was preparing for her NACMO ride, and I volunteered to help with trail clearing. On December first, we headed back with nippers, hand saws, and a handheld chainsaw that Sandy was trying out for the first time. I brought Booger and Sandy brought Tot. While the temperature was technically above freezing, there was a biting wind coming off the reservoir that made it feel much worse. We wound up doing the ridge trail, clearing the big tree, and coming through the campground for a total of six and half ish miles. 

Vetter Farm with Sandy

 A short while after Sandy brought Tot home, she asked if I'd be willing to come ride Fina with her. She had gotten the new girl out for a few trail rides with friends, but she specifically wanted to get her mares out together. Nobody was willing to ride Fina. I love Fina and was happy to oblige (poor Fina). We met up on a Tuesday after work (this was before the time change, obviously). Sandy suggested Vetter Farm, which is private preserved land accessible by permission. This was too good for me to resist. This will mostly be a photo dump, but it was glorious.

Not my usual set of ears.

Camping (and horse shopping) at Moshannon

 When we last left off, Sandy and I were plotting...

Sandy has had Fina for almost a decade now. (Where does the time go?) In that time, we have been on some truly fabulous adventures. While Fina doesn't show any actual signs of slowing down, she is getting older. Sandy has casually been thinking about her next horse. Her unofficial plan was to maybe get a young horse for her 40th birthday (next year). 

In the process, Sandy has been talking about the things she does and does not want in her next horse. The abridged version is that she was looking for a young horse, preferably a mare, preferably gaited, with a pretty blank slate. 

Sandy has loved Lucy since the first time they met, and the more we talked, the more she was pretty sure she wanted a fox trotter. I have to giggle at the number of fox trotters that seem to come into my life these days. Before I met Lilly in 2012, I had never met a MFT before! Now I own one and a half and Lilly is still very much in my life. Sandy and I even talked about going to Missouri to try some (this would have been an epic adventure, I am sure.)

As all my readers probably know, horse shopping can be a real roller coaster. Sandy sent me ads for potential horses, and I dutifully looked at them with scrutiny. I nitpicked and weighed pros and cons. Some of them, I flat out typed "NO" to. 

Then Sandy sent me a handful of photos of some fox trotters that were about four hours away in Pennsylvania. There was a breeder with a handful of horses for sale, ranging in age from six months to seven years old. The photos were mostly of the horses hanging out in their pasture, but there was something that drew us both in. There was a black pinto mare, five years old, that specifically got my attention.

"I think they're worth looking at," I encouraged Sandy. "It's not that far of a drive and there are multiple horses to make the trip worth it."

When we rode the Columbia Trail together, we were both looking for something to do the following weekend. Sandy agreed to go home to see if the MFT owners were available to show her their horses. 

Coincidentally, the Moshannon State Forest is near the farm the sale horses were at. There is equestrian camping at Moshannon, and it was on our list of places to check out. On Thursday, Sandy and I were still hemming and hawing. I checked the camping website and found that the sites at North Run were wide open. Sandy was still on the fence.

Finally I texted her. "I just booked site #4 for tomorrow through Monday." That was all the encouragement Sandy needed. 

So, with less than 24 hours notice, we went into the forest for four days with a side of horse shopping along the way. It was brilliant.

A change of scenery in more ways than one.

Chasing Waterfalls (and beer)

 As I mentioned, I was supposed to do the Chautauqua ride with Booger, but opted not to. This meant I had an unexpected free weekend, which left me feeling sorry for myself. The rainy weather didn't help. Sandy ended up coming to the rescue, and we agreed to meet at the Columbia Trail in High Bridge. We wound up having a ride that was (in a word): epic:

Sandy and me in front of the Solitude Dam. 

Fingers Crossed 2024

 My first foray into the world of mounted orienteering was at the Fingers Crossed ride in April of 2023. This year, Fingers Crossed was held in September and I got to go back to where it all started (plus camping.)

Xamping

 Last year, there was a NACMO ride at the Tuscarora State Forest. We did not manage to go, and I was sad to miss out on camping and new-to-me trails. When Dodie invited us to go camping with her and Melissa at Tuscarora over Labor Day weekend, I was all over it! Then Melissa invited Sandy and Sandy invited Emily. As luck would have it, there are only five campsites at the equestrian campground, so we had the whole place to ourselves! Dodie put the trip in her calendar, only she misspelled "camping" as "Xamping". By the end of the weekend, we had turned xamping in to a whole thing. 

Adventure at Stephens

 The weekend after Fair Hill, it was Booger's turn for an adventure. Sandy and I were overdue for some shenanigans. We have been wanting to go up to Stephens State Park together for a while so when Sandy asked if I wanted to do that trail, I replied, "Sure, send me a pin to the parking lot."

She did. Then she added, "Don't panic when you see the ninety degree turn over the one lane bridge into the parking lot. If I fit, you'll fit."

Now. Sandy and I have been on some Adventures together. She has never given me any kind of warning about parking before. 

I checked out the street view. Not so bad:

Another Assunpink Ride

 Here's a post that should have just been part of my July photo dump, but I just missed it. Because I'm neurotic, I can't just put it in with August photos, and I can't just forget this handful of images. 

On Booger's birthday, my gift to her was leaving her alone. (In all seriousness, I was giving her some down time between the 30 at Muckleratz and the 50 at Vermont.)

I basically spent every free weekend day in July (there weren't many) scouting trail at the Assunpink for my upcoming NACMO ride. On this day, Eryca and Sandy joined me. This was the first time in a long time that we trailered Lilly out for a real trail ride. She had done the AVTA hunter pace, but that was only four miles and on our home trails. Before that, we went to Christie Hoffman in June. And before that? I think the winter NACMO ride was the last time Lilly really worked. 

It was brutally hot on this day. My only goal for the day was to find the confounded graveyard. I was dying to put an objective up there, but I had failed repeatedly to find my way there on purpose. Well, long story short, we failed our mission, but we did six miles and I started to have a pretty good idea of where I wanted to put pie plates. I also cemented the most direct route from the road to the bowling pin. The good news about hosting a NACMO ride at the Assunpink is that I now know the WMA much better than I ever have before. (I still need to do a refresher on the west side of the area.) 

The highlight of this ride was that I accidentally swam Lucy. We stopped at the boat launch early in the ride and I let Lucy wade in. She quickly wandered up to her belly and drank. Then she kept creeping a little further. She got up to her withers, like she had at Green Lane. The she glanced over her shoulder at me and flicked an ear. 

"Go ahead," I chuckled.

She pushed off, swam a little circle, and exited the lake. She has clearly gone swimming before. I wonder if she had a pond in her pasture in Texas. As I've mentioned in the past, she really wilts in the heat. I've often wondered how she survived in Texas. Having a access to and taking advantage of a pond would make sense. (Of course, it's also possible she swam with a rider. Or maybe she's just a natural. I will never know.) 

After that, we did several little mini laps around the lake. I was sopping wet, but it felt awesome on a hot day, and I was dry about halfway through our ride. I keep saying it, but I really need to get Lucy down to a proper swimming hole to take advantage of her willingness to swim. It's one of my favorite horseback activities. This also took me on a pleasant trip down memory lane. I used to swim Ozzy here, many moons ago.

Ozzy, 2010.

Same spot, different angle. Lucy 2024.

The rest of this post is just a photo dump.

Solstice Ride

 I have been having a lot of good adventures this year, but my favorite one so far was the ride Sandy, Hannah, and I did for the summer solstice.

This photo was taken at midnight, beneath a beaming full moon, with the river glittering to the horizon and beyond. I want to go back right now.

Father's Day NACMO

 The weekend before Father's Day, Dodie hosted a NACMO ride at Green Lane. Of course, I was in! This NACMO ride also featured camping, which I was extra excited about. It turned out to be a stellar weekend. Highlights included dunking the ponies in the reservoir, riding bareback at night with fireflies lighting the way, and doing the long course with friends.

Truly my happy place. Lucy was also very content, and was giving a series of happy grunts.