What a year!!🎆🎆🎆

I hope your year has been as adventurous as mine!! Mia and I have rode 176.3+ miles for 2021. I say "plus some" because when we ride at home I forget to log my ride sometimes 🤦‍♀️ so we are missing maybe 30 miles or so with that, give or take. For my new years resolution I plan to track all of my rides, even the small "leg up rides" we do at home, which are only about 2 mile rides when it is all said and done.

This past year of course has had some hardships to them with my personal day to day life, however I think I can gladly say that the good outweigh the bad.

Me and my husband started the new year out with riding at the house mainly, but we did ride at Prague lake in January. February, from the rides logged anyway, I believe were mainly at the house. For Oklahoma weather, our winter doesn't seem to really start until January/February and end in about early to mid march it seems to slow down some. However 2020 we did end up having an ice storm and snow in October. where it it typically still 80 degrees out but... yea... needless to say, Oklahoma weather is crazy.

In April of 2021, we took our spring weekend trip to Lake Carl Blackwell. The weather was clear literally until the day of us leaving...UGH... seems like every time we plan a trip, crap weather is there. We ended up 2 out of the 4 days we were there to have rain. When it finally cleared out, we saddled up to then find out no sooner than I swung a leg over Mia, she was sore in her back. Which sucked even more... I knew her maintenance chiropractor routine was coming up... but I was hoping for it to wait a couple more weeks after our trip... Mia had other plans lol

So sadly that trip was a bust... windy, rainy and wet.

We rode a little more, then as the weather warmed up, I started the seasoning process for barrel racing on Mia. Mia is such the pleaser and she learns so fast. I had inconsistently practiced the barrel pattern on her from December to about April/May and then would go to a couple of playdays. The Rain continued with late spring and early summer and rained out almost all of the races, so it was HOT when the races finally were able to be ran. Other than barrel racing, we spent most of our summer at the Illinois River, Arbuckle Lake and Shawnee Twin Lakes to stay cool!

Fall rolls around and we were able to take another long trip! To Heaven's Gate RV and Resort in Muse Oklahoma. I absolutely cannot say enough about this place!! We LOVED IT!!! Now with that said, this was our first trip. And man..... it was a trip... so lol STORY TIME!!

Heaven's Gate is so popular that it fills up quick! While there are times she does have cancelations, we did not want to take the chance of not getting a spot. We reserved our spot in June for an October spot and it was the very last spot!! After watching the weather months ahead of time on the Accu Weather app, we were in the clear. Weather predictions casted for 40's for a low and 65-75 for high! The weather for once was going to be PERFECT!! .....SIKE!!! Literally the DAY BEFORE WE LEAVE... rain moves in... and according to the radar, we would be getting some in the morning, driving in it a little bit and then it was going to clear out.... WRONG! It rained the WHOLE drive, we checked in, in the rain, unloaded in the rain, then sat in the truck until the rain let up some. It finally broke to a sprinkle/drizzle long enough to get camp set up. Now keep in mind... we camp out of our little Calico 2 horse bumper pull...

A little back story on the past camp trips in the Calico. We don't mind roughing it... its all we got and we are damned to miss an adventure just because we don't have a gooseneck or a LQ for that matter. So we have rigged our little rig the best we could in the situation we had. Our first trip spring of 2019, Lake Carl Blackwell, we threw hammocks up in the back of the trailer. This would have worked but my trailer isn't long enough to stretch the hammocks out fully so it was very hard to get out of them...plus I could not stay warm in them. Our Next trip was Robbers Cave, fall of 2020 and we ended up buying a queen sized air mattress. This would have been great but the dang thing got a hole in it and it was little but big enough for the mattress to deflate throughout the night multiple times LOL... so we did some digging and before the hammocks we thought of cots but I was like there ain't no way I am sleeping on that with the big bar in the middle of it, those things are so uncomfortable... like no.... Well guess what... for our spring 2021 trip we got cots LOL... BUT these cots are fancy cots!! Me and my Husband, were walking through Academy in Midwest City and came across these cots made by Coleman that were spring loaded like a trampoline! So the canvas gives a little bit and you aren't laying on the support bar in the middle!! They also come with a mattress but it is not that thick, so we ended up for the time being getting a cheap mattress off amazon and then for our fall trip to Heaven's gate we got a 3" mattress topper for them as well so we had 4" all together with the original mattress topper the cots came with and the memory foam mattress topper we bought for the fall trip. Now our cots do fit in the back of the trailer, but it is a TIGHT fit. Not much room for getting in and out of the trailer with the slant wall in the way. My trailer is only 6' wide so if it were 7' it wouldn't be an issue. Now back to the original story...

The rain finally broke to set up camp and because of the little to no room with the cots in the back of the trailer, we also had a canopy from the spring trip we bought to keep all of our things dry... we ended up finding a tent that attaches to the canopy from Walmart and thought this would be perfect to sleep in vs the trailer and the rest of our tote boxes, hay and firewood can go in the back of the horse trailer for the time being to stay dry! Now this idea would have worked PERFECTLY, but with the rain we were having, came 50 MPH FREAKING WINDS!!!!!! For 2 of the 4 days we were there, it rained, drizzled, the wind blew non stop, even at night and we could just not catch a break. The second night the wind blew so hard, it ended up blowing over our canopy, which our tent was attached to, the tent crashed down on top of us and if it wasn't for the tent stakes, the whole thing would have ended up in the stalls where the horses were. With the wind blowing while we were trying to get everything untacked, we threw it all in the back of the trailer, jumped in the truck and tried to sleep till dawn. Sunlight peaked through, the wind laid so I jumped out of the truck and started getting a new sleeping arrangement made for the last night. I got all of our stuff unloaded, our cots set up in the back of the trailer and the horses taken care of. With 2 hours of sleep, we decided to go ride and rode 5 hours. Needless to say, by the time we got back to camp, we were ready to crash!

I fed the horses, got them hay and water, took an ibuprofen and took a 3 hour nap. I would have slept all night, but my husband woke me up and had a fire going. The fire was super nice, especially after a long day. Besides the fact that I apparently have a super power of attracting the smoke to my face no matter where I sit at and no matter which way the wind blows....ugh so annoying... but it was still nice to enjoy...

Our wild trip ended on a great note. We packed up most of our stuff first thing, changed clothes and decided to go on a shorter ride for the fact that checkout was at noon. We hit the red trail, which is called "The Flats" and it was a very nice trail. This trail was so fun, you were able to long trot and lope on it for quite a while. 7 miles were completed in about a 2 hour ride. When we got back, we untacked and rinsed off the horses, loaded up and headed home.

The rest of the year entailed of riding sportsman's lake in Seminole Oklahoma, while we still had shoes on our horses, then we rode Prague lake a lot. Lately we have just been riding at the house, but for New Year's Day before the cold snap hits, we plan to ride at Prague lake more than likely.

Our next adventure I believe is going to take place at Horse Heaven Ranch Resort in Talihina Oklahoma, which is only 30 minutes down highway 63 from Heaven's Gate. I'm not sure if this is the set in stone place we are going to yet, but it is an option. We are planning this trip with my family friend, Gail, from Texas. When I was a kid, She used to ride with us all the time when we rode at the Indian Mounds camp in Clayton Oklahoma. Her son, Garrett is around the same age as me and I remember the little camp dinners and things that we got to do when we were little. Gail and I go way back but haven't seen each other in years so I am super excited to be riding with her again!

I hope everyone else had a fun crazy adventurous life on the trail like we did!! And that there are plenty new adventures to come!!

Happy Trails 🌻🐴🌻