Ridin' Ranger

We went riding on Monday, swallowed our pride and paid the $10 for a one day ride at Blackwell Horseman's Camp in the Hoosier National Forest, otherwise known as the Charles C. Deam Wilderness area. We have been riding there since we were kids and now we have to pay to use the trails, it just isn't right. I was riding there before it was even a horseman's camp.

I took Ranger and my DH took Darth, they both did well but Ranger was awesome. He doesn't shy from anything. He walks through horse swallowing mud holes and didn't even notice any of the horse eating stumps or fallen trees.

He doesn't scrape your knees against trees unless there is gravel in the trail, he hates gravel, we will have to shoe him for the next ride. Who puts gravel on horse trails anyway? The thing that really grates me is that we are paying for the stupid gravel with our $10 per day.

The thing that I really love about Ranger is he puts his nose to the ground and he doesn't stumble, he is super careful on rough and steep ground. Flies don't bother him either, even horse flies. I don't mean that he doesn't mind them (which he doesn't) but they don't like his color. They did land on the saddle and pad though. Darth got the bites but the flies really weren't that bad.

Darth had to go twice as far as Ranger went, because he kept having to turn around and come back down the trail to make sure we were still coming. Ranger is very slow and does not mind being left behind, there is not a buddy sour bone in his body. All in all he is a perfect horse, just needs to learn some neck reining and maybe to speed up his walk.

 

 

We only rode for about 3 to 3 1/2 hours. I didn't get too sore but my back was demanding that I get off and walk awhile. We had ridden a few weeks ago down the road to check on some young horses that we are pasturing at a friend's place. I rode Leroy that day and my Husband rode Heath.

We were about halfway to our destination when the sky cut loose and engulfed us in a ferocious thunderstorm. We had heard the sound of distant thunder but we didn't think that it would find its way to us. All of the sudden there was lightening flashing all around us. The flashes were scary enough without the sound of the ground shaking thunder. We were all ducking.

When the rain came it was large stinging drops that were being blown horizontally. My DH tried to turn back but I talked him into going on in search of shelter. We finally found a barn with easy horse access. We rode into it and waited and waited for the rain to stop.

The hard rain on the tin roof made it hard to even talk, so we waited some more. I tried to clean the water off of my glasses but neither of us could find anything dry to wipe them with.

Here are some more pictures of poor Ranger after our little ride at Blackwell. We met some other riders on the trail, three ladies on cell phones (you get a strong cell phone signal in the Deam Wilderness), they called my horse fat. They didn't say that I had a nice looking horse or a pretty horse, they just said that I had a fat horse. Here are some pictures of my fat horse and his saddle sores after a three and a half hour trail ride.

 

 

Deam Wilderness

I was on the phone with my eldest Son while he was reading my blog Perfect Horses and Kids. He was having a wonderful time talking to me on the phone while being online at lightening fast speeds, he was telling me how fast he could pull up a page, then saying things like, "I have high speed internet and you don't.", he is just warped and cruel like that.

Anyway he was laughing as he read my blog about hauling horses in the bed of a pick-up truck, and he said that I should blog about how we used to make our kids ride under the horse instead of on top. I will tell that story in a future blog.

The area that we rode in was a national forest and back then there were no restrictions on where you could ride, you could make a trail wherever you wanted to. That area is now called the Deam Wilderness and the horseman's camp is called Blackwell.

We made most of the horse trails with motorcycles when I was a kid. My Dad and Uncles would haul motorcycles in and ride through the woods. They were logging there back then and they left big piles of sawdust and wood shavings everywhere, those were just perfect for playing with motorcycles on.

Can you even imagine a national forest that you could just use like it was yours? My Dad and Uncles drove their nice family cars and trucks back into the forest on logging roads and I remember getting hung up with those big old cars that were heavier than tanks. No one had 4-wheel drives back then.

We would sometimes get stuck on the frame of the car in a rut that was deep enough to hide a ferris wheel in. My Uncle would just jack it up and run the car off of the jack. You couldn't tear those old solid cars up.

My family would sometimes haul horses into the Deam Wilderness area and drive back a log road and just camp by the first pond we came to. We would spend a couple of weeks of vacation time swimming, riding, fishing and frog gigging. No one ever bothered us there, unless it was family coming to visit.

We didn't have to worry about hikers or DNR people walking in on us because nature, natural resources and conservation weren't popular back then. The only people that wanted to get out in that area were people like us and there weren't many people like us, we were way ahead of our time.

So while my eldest Son may rub in his high speed internet connection to me, I can always make him green with envy by talking about driving back to those ponds and spending a couple of weeks of seclusion in the summer. Not having to stay on the beaten path but being able to wonder where ever you wanted to go. That is something that he will never be able to do, well, at least not legally.