Riding Banner Forest on Horses

How is training going? This has been a week of hard workouts and a weekend of rest.

Banner Forest is my local riding haven. Its 640 acres of county owned property just to the north East of our farm. I can haul my horses over there in a short 10 minutes and be on the trail in another 10. The service road makes a crescent shaped cut through the middle with many trails off of it.

While the horses are still in winter condition we mostly stay on the service road but now that I've had them over there a few times we have started to go on a couple of the side trails, Banner Slough being the biggest one.

This is Bonnie on Kari going through one of the mud puddles on Banner Slough. I had just gone through here myself on Sunshower, barely any hesitation for us, yay.

Today I will be riding Joey, Amy will ride Taz, Abby will ride Charlie, Larissa will ride her mare, Bonnie will be on Kari and Patti will be riding her mule, Jonny.
With so many of us I'm going to suggest we split up and meet back at the trailers later. Its fine to have a big group of people but I'd rather have some time to ride with Amy without all the people there. If everyone wants to stay together thats fine too, fun either way.

Amy recently got divorced from her husband of 15 years, had to sell 2 of her Freisian horses, lost her job due to the bosses bitchy wife, lost her farm due to no job and last week her beloved dog, Jackpot, died. That was too much. Its already been a hell of a year for poor Amy. I hope todays ride can give her some hope. Plus I haven't seen her in about 5 months and we only live a short ways away from each other.

I am a member of Sea Spots Appaloosa Club located in & around Kitsap County. One of the many things they do is have a 'Penny A Mile' program where you keep track of the miles you ride each month and at the monthly meetings you pay 1 cent per mile. At the end of the year when they have the awards banquet they give $75 to the person who rides the most miles. So far I've only got 21 turned in but just in the last week I've already gone another 11 and today I hope to add another 5-7. I am bound and determined to win this program this year!  Last year I kept track of my miles but never got around to joining the Penny A Mile. Doh!

I better go eat and get my own shit together, we should be leaving here in a little over an hour.