Last month, I took Chip on his first serious off property trail ride (second formal field trip). It was the first time he'd meet other horses away from home. In fact, there were several first. Baby's first biting bugs. Baby's first time breaking a sweat. Baby's first bridges. Baby's first rocky climb. It was such a good day that I'm still beaming just thinking about it.
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| Cheesin' so hard! |
The Father's Day NACMO at Green Lane was two weekends ago. This year, I decided to book two nights of camping for extra saddle time. Of course, it turned out to be the hottest week of the year so far, with a real feel well over 100℉. It wound up being a great weekend despite the heat.
Terra and I were overdue to ride together. At the beginning of the month, we finally took care of that. We agreed to meet at Horseshoe Bend for an afternoon ride. We wound up doing 11 miles and it was perfect.
The NACMO season is off to a good start. I hosted my ride in January. Then the weather did not cooperate and the February Awards Ride got reschedule until spring. That made Sandy's March ride my first competition of the year. I went from not knowing if I'd have a team to suddenly riding with Terra, Sarah, and Michele. Last year, Terra, Julie, Tor, and I found all ten objectives and won this ride, so the bar was pretty high.
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| Spoiler alert: we did it again! |
I hosted my second NACMO ride on Sunday (yes, in the face of an incoming snowstorm because... well... *gestures at life*). I decided to apply for the permit right before Christmas, which means I had pretty much exactly one month to get my act together. I learned a lot from hosting my first ride last summer, and I have to say most things were easier the second time around.
Of course, this means I had a good excuse to do a lot of trail scouting and exploring and riding. I spent every weekend of January at Colliers Mills with various people. And, of course, there was the actual setting of the course, which Mike and I did by car last weekend.
Originally, I was going to do a separate post for each ride, but I'm feeling very inspired to get the blog back to real time (ish). I WILL reserve my ride with Booger on Saturday for its own entry. It was one of my favorite rides on her to date. But I'm going to dump the rest here in chronological order for the sake of brevity.
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| Eryca and I seem to do some version of this photo every winter and I love it. |
Sandy hosted the last NACMO ride of 2024 at Round Valley in December. Of course, I was in for the long course.
Originally, I was supposed to ride with Terra and loan Lilly to Dodie so she could join us. Then I found out that Tor was available and I hooked her up with Terra because I was out of horses and trailer spots. Terra agreed to loan Pride to Tor. Then Dodie decided to ride with Jen on the short course because Jen didn't have a team. Then Melissa reached out and Jen reportedly found a team. Dodie said she would be up for a foursome including her new mare, Lillie (also a gray), but we would have to go slow. I felt like four might be a crowd and wasn't sure Lilly could actually do 14-ish miles of tough terrain at Round Valley.
In the end, Dodie did the short course with Melissa, Jen, and Angela. Tor, Terra, and I stuck with the long course.
A few days before the ride, I looked at the season points for our region and realized that I was in second place right behind Jen S, the leader of the Four Horsemen. At first, I thought she was too far ahead of me to catch. Then I did the math and realized that if she didn't show up and I had a perfect day (finding all ten objectives and coming in first) I could beat her by one point.
If you've been reading this blog for more than thirty seconds, you can probably see where this is going. I was on a mission.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, Sandy, Terra, and I went to Round Valley for a ride. Sandy was planning a NACMO ride there for December and wanted to see if the trails were clear. We were originally going to meet in the earlier, but I had found a run in shed, and was having it delivered first thing that morning. We pushed our meeting time back to 11am.
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| A beautiful view at one of my favorite places. |
The next morning was the Covered Bridge Trail Association fall pace. Eryca and I did this one two years ago and loved it. They weren't able to hold it last year, and I was excited to see it back on the calendar for 2024. These are Terra's home trails and we invited her to join us.
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.)
The day after the hunter pace, I met up with Terra at the Assunpink.
As I may have mentioned on here, I got peer pressured into hosting my first NACMO ride in August. I've been thinking of putting one on at the Assunpink since I did my first CMO last year. There are so many good clues and hiding places and beautiful trails. The downside to the Assunpink is that there are no formal maps of the WMA, which means I need to make the actual map on top of coming up with clues and putting out objectives. This means I've been riding at the Assunpink every chance I get. Not that there have been many chances. I feel like Mike and I have been away more weekends than we've been home this year. I'm not complaining, but boy does the time fly by.
I was originally going to make one big mega post about scouting trail and hosting a NACMO ride once it was over, but I can't seem to make myself blog out of chronological order (mostly because I'll lose my place and never find it again). I'm two weeks out from the ride date and over a month behind on blogging.
This will probably be mostly a photo dump. I took a billion photos of different potential clues and hiding places, but I don't want to give anything away.
The short version of this story is as follows:
Perhaps if I get lost while scouting the trail, I shouldn't be the one responsible for designing the course.
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| Here, have a photo of Lucy herding a flock of geese. |
As I've mentioned a few times in my last several posts, Sandy and Emily hosted their first NACMO ride at Deer Path Park in April. I first heard about the plan as it was hatching back in February at Dodie's ride. I was very excited to have a ride super local to us, and I joked about having a home field advantage because I know the trails. I planned to take Lucy and do the long course. We went, we saw, we conquered. It was a good day.
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| I have gotten really into this sport in the last year. |
