Tippecanoe State Park

We are fortunate that Indiana has parks close by that have horse trails. Tippecanoe State Park is about an hour or so drive from our house, and they have riding trails and a horseman's campground. We don't like to camp there, because the horse camp does not have shower facilities -- and they are almost militant about horse people going over to the family campground to shower. Let's face it, if you are around horses all day and riding the trails you definitely need a shower at the end of the day. It is pretty poor planing of the park system not to recognize that. We decided if we ever do go there to camp again, we will pay for a camping spot in the family campground, set up our extra tent there, and make it look "occupied" so we can go and take a shower. John is going to write a letter to the state parks department and let them know about this situation, but he hasn't yet. At any rate, we went there last weekend for day riding.

It was a nice day, and there were lots of riders there. We have only been there a couple of times, so we don't know the trails. We got a trail map, which is really sort of a joke for us. We can never follow those things. In Indiana they print the trail map in green, so it is just a lot of squiggly green lines on the paper -- we always get lost and the map never helps. But this time we met some people on the trail who knew where they were going, so we rode with them. I was proud of our Girls -- they are getting so much better about riding with other horses. Zora was even content to be last in the line, and Divna didn't kick any of the other horses. They were very well behaved, and I think they enjoyed it.

They were really nice people, and as it turns out, live in Northwest Indiana, too. So it looks like we may have some new people to ride with. After the ride we sat around the picnic table near where we were parked and had snacks and cold drinks. We talked for the longest time -- it is so neat to meet other horse people like that. We are really looking forward to going riding with them again. They know of some places in Lake County where we have never ridden before, and we hope to meet them at the Dunes or have them out to our place to ride the trails around our house.

It was a great day and a lot of fun. The best money we ever spent was on our horses....having them has provided us with so much in terms of entertainment and meeting great people.