Came to a Conclusion

We finally took "The Girls" for a camping trip last weekend. Went to Tippecanoe State Park here in Indiana. We have been there before, and to be honest, I never really liked it. However, this time the park won me over.

When we were there before, it was one of those freak weather things -- a weekend in October that turned out to be 90 degrees. It was AWFUL! Too blasted hot, too many mosquitos, too many flies (doesn't everyone use the fly control feed thru pellets? Evidently not....). The trails seemed too sandy and tough on the horses. Plus, the horse camp is primitive -- no showers, only pit toilets....and the park "gendarmes" will not allow the equestrian campers to use the nice facilities in the family camping area. So I had a bad experience, and therefore an attitude about the park.

But since then, we developed a "shower" system to use in our horse trailer (see my post from last October), and last weekend the temperatures were mild and perfect for riding. In fact, we had three great rides......really had a chance to explore the trails there, and to my surprise, they are really nice trails. It was great riding.

But, I had an epiphany -- I did realize something........

All this time, I knew John and I were different. But now I have actually put my finger on it, and understand the reality of the situation.

Most horseback riders have a certain look and demeanor about them. They ride past our campsite, looking very much "together." Immaculate tack, riding at a slow, calm, relaxed pace....just really civilized and proper.

Quite the opposite of John and me -- no matter how hard I try, or how much I get prepared, we just always look like a couple of maniacs on our maniac horses.

This is everyone else .....

This is us.......

It finally dawned on me....if the horseback riding world was like the motorcycle riding world, John and I would be the "Hell's Angels." Everyone else is the nice, together, sensible family type motorcyclists, and we are the bad boys of the road.

Pretty strange.....

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.