# Who's camping/riding where...



## apdan (Jul 23, 2010)

So I was reading on here and the last topic about trail riding was back in 09. So I thought I would start a "new" one... Who's camping where this year so far?? How are the rides? How are the bugs? I haven't been out myself this year actually camping overnight but my favorite is Hungerford in Big Rapids, MI (15 minutes from my house.) I do however like the day camp they offer!  It makes for an easy drive and then I don't have to ask grandma to watch the rest of the animals for the weekend!!!! The bugs however riding by my house are HORRIBLE!!!! But the rides are gorgeous!

Just curious as to how everyone elses summer of riding is going!


----------



## michickenwrangler (Jul 23, 2010)

Oh, geez, where to begin?

April-May: Trail rode mostly near Lake Ogemaw for conditioning rides, finished out the month in Michigan's U.P. on the Bay de Noc-Grand Island Trail. Won our CTR up there. Very hot and humid and the blackflies were awful. But I do love da U.P., the forests are so mature there and there's a stretch of trail I call the "fairy valley" that is full of green moss and huge old hemlocks.







June: Conditoned on the same trails at home. Competed at Hopkins Creek Trail, rained all day Sunday so the bugs weren't bad at all! Came in 2nd there

July: No competitions but trailered to the Shore to Shore Trail camp at South Branch for some conditioning rides. Some deerflies but not too terrible.






August: Competing in Day 1 and Day 2 of Shore to Shore, from Lake Huron to South Branch. Wish me luck!

September: Debating whether to do Tin Cup Springs in middle of the month (in the small town of Luther in Pere Marquette State Forest) or to return to the U.P. for the Pine Marten Run by Munising and Lake Superior.


----------



## apdan (Jul 23, 2010)

Very very gorgeous!!! Sounds like a busy but fun summer so far  Tons of good luck coming your way for the shore to shore in august!!!!   You guys will do great!!!!


----------



## LauraM (Jul 24, 2010)

Every year we do a four-day camping trip up in the mountains somewhere.  We keep doing this, even though just about every year there is at least once when we all nearly die.  Got some great stories, though!  

We camped on the Greenbriar River in Cass, WV last year. 

Here is a link to pictures of that camping trip:

Greenbriar River in Cass, WV 

We spent a number of years camping near Ivanhoe, VA.  It was a great place to camp, but it was sold and the new owners raised the price....... 

Ivanhoe, VA 


We camped at Iron Mountain, VA, also........but spent so much time trying to avoid death that there wasn't time to take pictures.  

Here's a link to that story:

How to Hang Onto a Side of a Mountain 

Soooo.....our next trip is scheduled for September 16-19, 2010.  We're going back to Cass, since we didn't have nearly enough death-defying experiences there.    There has to be SOMETHING we can get into...........


----------



## michickenwrangler (Jul 24, 2010)

How pretty Laura!

I've always liked West Virginia as a state and have always wanted to ride there!


----------



## LauraM (Jul 24, 2010)

The Greenbriar River area was exceptionally pretty.  We didn'g get to cover all the trails the last time because we got, ......um......turned around a couple of times.......and went in circles with a bear .......and kinda lost the trail.......and circled back to almost where we started......so this time we'd like to ride some of the trails we didn't, lol.


----------



## Horsiezz (Jul 24, 2010)

We rode LOTS of places this year,dont want to name them all cuz im lazy,teehee. But tomorrow were going to Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. Beautiful place,we go there all the time.  A bit of a drive from where we live,but its worth it. Theres trails that lead right to the lake! And you get only a few feet away from deer. Its amazing.  Also,there is BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS THERE!!!!! Cool,but kinda scary,huh? Its a BIG place so I kinda believe there could be one there .... haha . And YES The BUS ARE HORRIBLE. We make sure we spray ourselves and the horses down with bug spray! No pics sorry. lol


----------



## michickenwrangler (Jul 25, 2010)

Horsiezz said:
			
		

> We rode LOTS of places this year,dont want to name them all cuz im lazy,teehee. But tomorrow were going to Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. Beautiful place,we go there all the time.  A bit of a drive from where we live,but its worth it. Theres trails that lead right to the lake! And you get only a few feet away from deer. Its amazing.  Also,there is BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS THERE!!!!! Cool,but kinda scary,huh? Its a BIG place so I kinda believe there could be one there .... haha . And YES The BUS ARE HORRIBLE. We make sure we spray ourselves and the horses down with bug spray! No pics sorry. lol


Yup. My region, Northeastern Michigan, is another Bigfoot hotspot. MI's Upper Peninsula near the Seney Wildlife Refuge is another. I've had several encounters in all my years and miles of distance riding

Not to turn this into a discussion about sasquatches, but you can check your local sightings at www.bfro.net/gdb


----------



## apdan (Jul 26, 2010)

OHH MY GOSH!!!!!! that's freakin crazy!!! I was holding my breath just readin the your story hanging onto the side of a mountain!! I couldn't imagine being there!


----------



## ducks4you (Jul 26, 2010)

Hats off to you Laura!!  You are one of the bravest people I know, what with Extreme Trail Riding on your resume. 
You know there are a LOT of "goat trails" out there that used to be passable.
I was waiting to post on this thread until I got some of my many  years of Riding vacations photos scanned, but that will have to wait. 
We've been on some doozy trails--none THAT bad.  
Once, while with a group in the Colorado Rockies, we decided to ride up to Mount McClellan.  If I do it again, I'll trailer up to the road to Waldorf, but we didn't have a truck powerful enough to pull up Guanella Pass.  Instead, we picked up a trail from Empire.  It had been a LLOOONNNGG time since anybody used this trail, and it was even wide to enough to ride in pairs...at the start of it. We hit a part of trail where the Aspen saplings were "re-foresting".  You could walk through it, but you couldn't ride through it.  We opted to dismount and lead our herd leader, "Tyke," to see if we could even get a horse through it.  He made it.  The ground rose up on the side of mountain and dropped off the other way.  We decided to send each horse through it, like a chute, and the rider would follow on foot.  It took awhile, but it worked.  We had to reverse the operation on the way home.
I think we started our ride at about 8 am, and got down to our trailers about 6 pm.
You sure depend upon your old reliable horses to get you through some of these things.  You see, even "herd sour" has it's place, too.


----------



## LauraM (Jul 26, 2010)

Here's another post I made on another forum about our yearly camping trips:



> Well, we got back late last night. We had an absolutely wonderful weekend! If anyone in the mid-Atlantic region ever wants a perfect place to camp and trail ride, Hungry Horse Farm is it. We rode 8 hours on Friday, 5 hours on Saturday, and a little 1 hour ride on Sunday to get them loosened up for the trailer ride home. Shadow was a little bit stocked up on the back on Sunday morning, but he felt really good and perky, even after all that riding, and the little walk got rid of the swelling. The horses stay in stalls at night, and that is not something he is used to, although he is perfectly comfortable in a stall, so standing in a stall after all that exercise caused it. We always have a "pajama party" out in the fields after dark to let the horses graze and exercise and loosen up before bedtime.
> 
> Nobody got hurt, but my best friend's horse, Prof, did his best to take us all out at one point on the trail. We were on an old train-track bed, halfway up a mountain, with a drop-off down to a river (stunning views), and as we were walking through the only place where their was a granite wall on the river side (they had blasted through a rock fall to lay the tracks, evidently) we met some riders coming toward us. Prof was in the lead, and although he is an outstanding trail horse, the scene just didn't hit him right. There were about 5 horses and riders, and two dogs. They were still outside the walls, they weren't talking, (didn't even say hello), I don't think Prof could make out from the shadows what they were, and then the dogs popped out of the bushes right at his feet. Prof wheeled around and bolted back through the rest of us. Now, at first that doesn't sound too bad, but Prof is a seventeen hand, 1300lb. OTTB. So he was going to mow us down. I and one other girl was directly behind Prof. She saw what was coming, and tried to impose her horse, a 14.2 hand Morgan, in front of Prof to block him. Nice girl, but not real bright smile.gif. Prof literally knocked the little guy out of the way and kept swinging around toward me. He head was coming right at my chest and would have knocked me right out of the saddle. I figured I would rather have a broken hand than be knocked down amongst the feet of stampeding horses, (as you can imagine, when one horse panics, they all do; by now, horses were exploding everywhere around me. It must have looked like a bomb went off in the middle of us.) or be pushed over the side of the cliff, so I punched him in the face. Luckily for my hand, I hit the soft part of his nose, and not a bone, and the shock of it stopped his panic attack. He turned away from me and Shadow, and after plowing past two more horses, my friend got him stopped. And can you believe, with all that going on, those other people were still coming towards us without saying a word!?! I finally yelled at them to stop, and they did. After we got our horses calmed down, we backtracked to a wide area and let them pass (on the outside!). No one was really hurt, (my hand was sore for a few days)and no one came off their horse, but had that happened on any other section of that trail, and there would not have been a granite outcropping to prevent the horses from going over the side. The old RR bed was about 15 feet wide, but 15 feet is not much when you horse is in a panic! For the rest of the weekend, we refered to Prof as "the weapon of destruction."
> 
> ...


A fairly typical camping trip experience, lol.


----------



## apdan (Jul 27, 2010)

LauraM  you are a CRAZY LADY      I do this to you and your horse and the people that ride with you !


----------

