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."
We never did find out who those idiots on horseback were, as they were not from our campgrounds.
It was a pretty exciting tale to tell that evening to the rest of our group who was not with us that day. This was our fifth year there, and something exciting or unusual like that happens every year, and somehow it always involves Prof......Among our staid Quarter Horses, Tennesee Walkers, Morgans and Arabians, Prof keeps things exciting and provides our comic relief. He really is a good trail horse. Honestly.
Well, other than that, it was just normal trail riding stuff, getting into bees, getting caught in a vine (my horse) and having to be cut out of it, someone fell of a ledge into a creekbed, getting a little bewildered about the way back to the campground (we were NOT lost), Prof soaking us all with his splashing in the river.....
We had enough food to feed an army, (mealtimes were more like feeding frenzies) and I actually gained 2 lbs. even with all that exercise!
I do this to you and your horse and the people that ride with you ! 
