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All Work and No Play...
... Makes the Double E Stables staff really bored. So we decided to take the day off last Saturday and head up to Umstead Park. If you've never been there I highly recommend planning a day. Even if you don't have horses it is a g...
... Makes the Double E Stables staff really bored. So we decided to take the day off last Saturday and head up to Umstead Park. If you've never been there I highly recommend planning a day. Even if you don't have horses it is a great place for hiking or riding bikes. There are miles and miles of great trails for you to take on. If hiking or cross country running is your thing then there were some very fun looking trails going through the woods you would surely enjoy.
We were in the saddle for about six hours in all. Quarter horses walk between four and six miles per hour. We were trotting or running about a quarter of the time I would say. That means on a conservative end that we covered well over thirty miles.
After riding the nice flat Umstead trails we got bored and took to the woods. We crossed over highway 70 into some really challenging trails through the woods and even tried blazing some of our own. The day was absolutely fantastic. We unanimously agreed that we (the instructors) should try to take a day per month to go out like that and hit some local places like Raven Rock or the Lumbee river. I know we probably won't make it out once per month, but it is a good goal to have. Days like that remind us of why we own horses in the first place.
Another great thing for me personally is that when I do hard trail riding like that it makes me feel a very real connection to the brave folks that came before me in this country. Hardy frontiersman crossed this land during the late seventeenth and eighteenth century on the back of a horse. They rode for days through land nobody had ever seen or mapped out for them. They lived and died by their horse. It is a really neat feeling to look out through the woods and try to imagine what they must have felt. They had a totally different relationship with their horses - it is a connection that nobody in today's America can truly experience. For them owning a horse was not a hobby - it was about survival. One day I'd love to write a book about early explorers and their horses. I think it would be very interesting reading.
So anyways, here are some pictures from the ride. Sorry it took me a few days to get them online! I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.
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