First Ride of 2021: January 4 Birthday Trail Ride

I'm relieved the holidays are over. 

Going up to NJ is great, and I have a wonderful family who loves that I come home for two weeks, but it's a lot of travel, a lot of peopling, and a lot of avoiding plans this year. Before you yell at me for peopling during a pandemic, to me, peopling is just being around my family 24/7 living in the same house as them. I am the epitome of a recluse who lives alone with her dogs and would like to stay that way forever, thankyouverymuch. 

Christmas was nice and quiet, and the week between Christmas and New Year rolled by slowly. My birthday is New Year's Day and while this year I was tempted to drive south the weekend after Christmas, I decided to stay the second week. I probably won't continue to go up for two weeks forever, so may as well make it one last long trip home for the holidays. I was missing Goose and my barn friends though, so when Kalyn asked if I could come home Saturday January 2 so we could go trail riding that Sunday for my birthday, I was all in. Decision made, I was in my car on Saturday and driving home, looking forward to my first ride of the new year being in Camden on the glorious sandy trails we discovered just weeks before. 

We met at the barn early on Sunday morning to load the horses and head down to Camden. Kalyn was taking Pari and Scarlet in her trailer, and Amanda swung by to pick up Goose so he could ride with Zena. It took some coordinating since our barn is 100% mud right now, but that's what happens in winter in the Carolinas. We might not get snow or frequent freezing temperatures, but by golly we have rain and mud in spades. It will probably be a few weeks before I can ride at our farm (no arena, just pastures to ride in and honestly it's fine Goose loves having winter vacation in his mud spa) so I'm looking forward to taking a few more weekend trips out to trails or an arena when we can. 

Horses loaded, we headed out to meet up with Gabi and hit the trails. I don't love riding in large groups, pandemic aside, and my happy place is two to four. But five was a great number for us that day and we had absolutely perfect ponies on long reins enjoying the gorgeous near-60 degree and sunny day. The great thing about these trails is they're all sandy - even though there was the occasional standing water, it had a sand bottom and was easy to walk through without sinking. 

Giant puddles with sandy bottoms are great for splashing and letting baby horses learn about water.

Goose, Pari, Scarlet, and Bo haven't done much the past few weeks with the holidays and mud. Zena is a dressage superstar, still young, and learning how to also be a trail horse. They were all perfect. Like, no one spooked, we all rode on loose reins, Alyson, Gabi, and I caught a few small jumps, and we were grinning ear to ear the entirety of our 90 minute trail ride. We didn't cover as much ground as last time as we wanted to ensure the not-fit horses were not melting or working too hard considering their lack of work and amount of fur, but we simply had the most fun. I'm not writing this very well but on my furry, muddy, yak of a beast I felt like a hobbit riding my little woodland pony through the forest. It was bliss. 

Baby Scarlet on left, jealous that Goose is making out with Queen Zena. Both mares are half Friesian and I must say, I dig the Friesian crosses. 

Rows upon rows of pine.

I held on to the feeling of wishing I'd jumped more last time, and actually went for it. There was a nice 2'6" ish log/brush type jump that was wider than it was tall and Goose flew over it like the hero he is. It was SO much fun. With respect to his fitness level and because I baby his legs, we caught one other smaller jump a few times with Alyson and Pari and were whooping like the lunatic amateurs we are. Though we didn't catch the first jump on video, Kalyn caught the second. I love that we're just trotting along through the woods one after the other, the video just cracks me up remembering how much fun we had doing it. I'm pretty sure I'm five years old, it's fine. 

Because we had the babies with us (Zena and Scarlet), we didn't jump too many since it usually involves everyone stopping, letting the mares watch so they don't go bananas, and then hopping them back and forth, but we had fun all the same and I look forward to more adventures here with fitter horses so we can play some more. We rode for about an hour and a half before we figured we should pack it in and head back to the trailers for mimosas and snacks. Once there, we wanted to try to get a group picture so I propped my phone up on the back of a trailer and used my Apple Watch to take pictures from afar. This is the first time I've used this feature and boy do I recommend it, so easy! 

Okay so the sun was right behind us which is not ideal, but that was where I could prop my phone on the back of the trailer so it's fine. 

We hung out snacking on wraps and cookie cake before loading and heading home. I'm so grateful to these wonderful friends for setting up such a perfect start to our year of adventures (hopefully) and to Goose for being the most perfect forest pony after a few weeks off. 

Not sure what the next few weeks will look like, mud pending, but we're hoping to trailer out when we can and take advantage of local arenas or trails when we can do so safely. In the meantime, I need to undecorate for Christmas and start cleaning out some closets. Decluttering must also happen and there's no time like the present, I suppose, and with a lack of barn time since our annual mud spa has opened, I've got no excuse.