I never made it out riding with the horses yesterday. I had a series of issues come up. I had good plans and intentions but then I had to focus on resolving the presenting problems. First the truck had a dead battery. I jumped it and tried to pull the horse trailer up on to the road but as I was pulling out the truck dies. I was blocking the main road at that point however two neighbors came by and we jumped the truck again. The final issue came when I made a sharp turn with the truck and... Continue reading

I brush hogged the pastures again so they are looking good for fall. This will be the last time they get cut now. I have not even been riding since I have come back from Michigan. For some reason, Eli's left front leg below the knee still has some swelling. The area is just above his ankle. I am not riding him at all until this is totally gone. He is doing a lot of walking every day and is turned out on the big field. The last ride I did with him was a 50 mile ride but that... Continue reading

I came home with my horse Eli on Tuesday from Michigan (where he was wearing a winter blanket at night) to Missouri where I am in air conditioning and it is hot out. Summer really does continue down here in Missouri for pretty much the whole month of September. Eli was a very good traveler and has been up and back to Michigan twice this summer in our new horse trailer. I have been putting him in the middle stall of the three horse trailer. It is cute to watch the other horses here when we come back home. Bella,... Continue reading

Becky, Cookie and I all went with our horses to the Tin Cup Fall AERC ride near Luther Michigan on Friday September 17, 2010. We loaded the horses and traveled down there on Friday afternoon. I was really hoping for some decent sunny weather-so far it was fine. We brought lots of good food with us---thanks Becky and Cookie!!--so we were going to ride some great trails, eat some good food and meet people at the ride. We set up camp, got all three horses checked in and we prepared everything we could for the morning. The trail was out... Continue reading

Somehow Eli bent his front shoe. The shoer came and I decided to have him remove both his front shoes. I have some Easyboot Gloves that I can use on his front hooves. Saturday morning, the blanket he had been wearing was off. OK...that can happen. I think his bent shoe and the blanket being off of him are somehow related. He may have struggled trying to get out of his blanket and bent his shoe. This is speculation I know but he has not had shoe problems before so something strange happened. I rode Eli Saturday with the Easyboot... Continue reading

On Saturday, Karen, Jeff, Tanner and I hiked the Empire Bluffs Trail just south of Empire. This trail is in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The weather lately has been cold and very windy. We thought it would be a good day for a hike. Plus, this hike is fairly easy and the trail comes out on to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes overlooking Lake Michigan. South Manitou Island in the background. Jeff, Tanner and I. Karen, Jeff and Tanner. Tanner at the beach in Empire, Michigan. Very windy! Continue reading

I was planning to attend the White River Fall Endurance ride about two hours away from here in Michigan. I have my Arabian horse up here with me in Northern Michigan. Two of my kids came up to the house this weekend (Tanner and Jeff) and I decided to stay here and do things with my kids and Karen, Jeff's girlfriend, who came here from Buffalo New York. You know, there are always more endurance rides that I can go to but the chance to spend a Labor Day weekend doing fun things with my family is what I would... Continue reading

I got Caroline settled in college at the University of Missouri. Once I got back to St. Louis from Columbia, the shoer came... then I packed up, hitched up the trailer and brought Eli back up here to Glen Arbor, Michigan with me. I have not been able to come back up here before during this time of year since I always had to be home when I had children in school. It has been warm, sunny, cool nights...and a lot less people. Eli went home to St. Louis, and Ginger too, just a few weeks ago to St. Louis... Continue reading

I just came back today from taking my daughter to college in Columbia at the University of Missouri. She signed a contract for an apartment....sight unseen, over the summer. It did not end up being what she wanted and we had to find another place for her to live. She and I spend three days staying at the Stoney Creek Inn in Columbia while we looked for another suitable place for her to live. Caroline was going through sorority rush all day so I spent the day driving all over looking for a place for her to live. She does... Continue reading

I brought the horses down here to Missouri yesterday. It is hot, really hot, here with temperatures right near 100 degrees. It is unbearable outside. This hot weather has apparently been like this for awhile. Everybody is complaining about it. The inside of the house was about 95 degrees. I had the A/C off while I was gone. It took about three hours to get the house reasonably cooled down. The horses traveled fine. It took about 11 hours. Eli and Ginger are turned out in the field right now relaxing. They are back with Bella and Madison. They have... Continue reading

Isn't really too hard. But we skipped an essential step. We are building a small corral to keep the horses in here by the house for a few weeks at a time. There are some nice trails accessible from here. We started by putting in a few of the posts and rails but then a cable was hit and cut. Not good. We should have called the 800 DIG number. My phone line was out. This happened on a Friday afternoon so I had no phone all weekend. Fortunately, this cut cable did not seem to be going to any... Continue reading

Everything was going very well. We arrived at River Camp on Sunday afternoon--set up camp, horses checked in, attended the ride meeting, etc. We were planning to ride two days of LD (Limited Distance 25 miles)-- then go back home. The next morning, Monday, we saddled up and waited for the start time. Horses were fine. We started the ride and shortly into the ride, maybe four miles, my friend's saddle slipped to the right and she was not able to straighten it. She fell off and broke her elbow. She was in a lot of pain and it took... Continue reading

Ben, Caroline and I headed towards Traverse City to get more errands done. We figured we would just run in there and out quickly. Well, in reality, that does not really happen. Things take more time than we think. We drove to Cedar where Ben dropped off the motorcycle for a carburetor adjustment. Then on to Traverse City where we dropped Caroline off for her Salon appointment. That left Ben and I to drive the truck to the oil change place and get that done. The truck was reading that the oil left left was down to 15% so it... Continue reading

Pyramid Point south of Leland, Michigan taken from the boat as we head over to South Manitou Island. We rode the boat over from Leland which leaves at 10 a.m. heading for the island. It takes about an hour and a half to travel there. http://www.leelanau.com/manitou/ Once on the island we took a tour of a few of the old farms, the old school house, the cemetery and Lake Florence. A freighter travels north on Lake Michigan: The North Manitou Shoal Light known as the "Crib" was first lit in 1935. A three man Coast Guard crew lived in the... Continue reading

I drove down from Glen Arbor, to south of Holland Michigan to the town of Hamilton heading for Silver Creek Park where the Oak Leaf Run AERC ride was being held. This park has over 25 miles of riding trails with lots of shady single track trail, some sand and gravel roads and mostly flat. When I pulled in to ride-camp. the ride manager, Barb, said that she had a campsite available. I was thrilled to hear this. I had tried to book a campsite a few days earlier through the park but they told me that once it is... Continue reading

Since I have a living quarters horse trailer now, I have recently been so intrigued by people who sell their houses and live in an RV full-time. It sounds so freeing to not have a house to maintain and spend money on. I have read two books, one is Full-time RVing by Bill and Jan Moeller and the other is Great RV Trips by Charles Cadieux. I find the traveling lifestyle very fascinating. Ideally, I would like to sell my house in St. Louis, Missouri and base myself out of Northern Michigan. I could live in Michigan four or five... Continue reading

I thought it would be easier...putting up some horse fencing behind the house here in Michigan. Last summer when I had the horses over here, they got out and were heading down the road. We found them over a mile away at about 6 a.m. If they do come over here to the house, I just have to make sure they cannot get out. I got a lot of help from one of the salesmen at Tractor Supply here in Traverse City. I went there to buy some corral panels but walked out with the supplies to put up wire... Continue reading

Caroline had to work on Saturday till 4 p.m. I went to the Golden Valley to get the trailer hitched up and get the horses ready to load. I filled the water tank, which takes a long time to fill, and loaded the hay and grain that the horses would need in the trailer. The trailer was pretty much already packed since I just came up to Michigan from Missouri five days earlier. It is only 75 miles to Hopkins Creek and is an easy, pretty drive. We stopped briefly at the Tractor Supply in Traverse City to pick up... Continue reading

There are places in Leelanau County that I have not been to such as Omena, Michigan. Omena, from Ojibwe Indian lore, supposedly means "Is that so?" Or, "Is that really true?" It may also mean "apple" as that is the finnish word for Apple. We stopped at Leelanau Wine Cellars. Website: http://www.lpwines.com/wineries/leelanau/ They have a restaurant overlooking the bay called Knot Just a Bar. It looked like a place to come back to for lunch on another trip. Beautiful picture over the fireplace in the wine tasting room. On to Northport where we stopped in the harbor. Northport was and... Continue reading

June 5, 2010 was the day that the cows and their calves were going to be rounded up. All the calves had been born and were old enough to get branded, vaccinated, wormed and the males would be castrated. There were several of us riding around looking for the cows and we broke up into four to five groups of riders. We rode out in different directions trying to locate the cattle. This ranch has several thousand acres of land and is located in the Badlands of North Dakota which, I think, is challenging terrain. I have never been involved... Continue reading

I was thinking about heading up to Michigan this week. It is hot down here in St. Louis. I can do some things outside but after a few hours in the heat I have to get in the air conditioning. I have been brush-hogging all the pastures here. It is easy work and I like riding around on the tractor. The horse trailer is about half-way packed up. The horseshoer came today and the two horses that I am taking to Michigan have their shoes all reset. Even little Bella, the miniature horse, got her hooves trimmed and she stood... Continue reading

This National Park is 130 miles west of Bismarck, ND and 24 miles east of the Montana border. Lots of animals--wild horses, buffalo, birds, mule deer, white-tailed deer, prairie dogs and elk to name some of them. There are 110 square miles of badlands-rugged, challenging land. We got to see a few of the wild horses close up. They seem to have some paint horse heritage. Some have large white blazes and snips of white on their bodies. In the photo below, a stallion stands on a ridge top. Young foals- The scenery changes around every turn. There are steep... Continue reading

The grass is really tall now... time to mow or bale it. We have found someone to bale the hay out at Stoney Creek and he lives close by...which is good. Hopefully, we can get two cuttings off the fields this year and sell the first cutting to buyers straight out of the fields. Right now the horses have plenty of pasture to eat. Caroline and I have been riding at the park and the horses seem to be getting comfortable traveling in the slant load trailer. Actually, I was the one not comfortable, and I needed more practice pulling... Continue reading

My brother and I built a new hitching rail. My son Jeff had dug the two holes. Then he left town. Before he left he covered up the holes with some plywood to keep them dry and to keep people from falling in the holes. We bought two 8 foot poles for the vertical posts. We trimmed them to five feet or so. Then we concreted the two posts in the ground. We lifted the big rail onto the posts. We used a level to make sure the rail was at the right height. We bought two very long nails... Continue reading

I took the trailer for few test drives. It is not as easy to haul around as the smaller one. I guess everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It is a lot wider than the other one and longer too. I am still getting used to loading the horses in this one. I took Eli for one ride this week and that was fine. It is different though. I don't feel like I have a lot of confidence loading them by myself yet. When I put Eli in and leave the trailer he acts like he wants to follow me... Continue reading