New Years Beach Trip Day 1

So... sometime this Spring I got an email saying that Hunting Island was open!! I honestly don't remember if it said specifically for horseback riding or not, but... my thought was "YAY!!! We can go to the beach!". Then around Liz's birthday she mentioned wanting to go to the beach so we made plans! We decided that we would go with just the two of us because Party can be a bit fussy with a multiple horses. So I called Camelot and then... the first pitfall. They had rented out the guest house to a couple for the entire winter! UGH... no!!! But they were willing to still let us use the paddocks. So... we debated and found a little rental house a few miles away. Then about 2 weeks before we were going on the trip.. my friend messaged me asking where else I had ridden on the beach as Hunting Island was closed. Wait??! What?!?! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! So I called Hunting Island State Park and yep... apparently they decided to close the beach to horse back riding for the rest of the season. Um... NOOOOO!! I tried to cry and whine and complain that we had gotten the email and already rented a place. But nope. Sorry...  So at this point, Liz had gotten G and was really looking forward to riding him on the beach! Ugh.. I was so sad. We talked and debated and decided that maybe we could go to another beach, even if it meant a bit more driving. And the other days we could ride around Coffin Point and go to the sound. So... okay, now we're excited again. But then.. Seabrooke island, (where we rode when we showed in Charleston) was closed for the holidays and only open to the locals/boarders. Sigh... We called 3 other places and none were open or allowed horses in general. Man..... So again we debated. At this point we would only get half of our deposit back, minus some fee. So we finally decided to just change it from a beach trip... to a fun girls trail riding trip. Which was still exciting! We both still needed to get away and relax and have some good food and good pony fun. So off we went!

Beach Trip that Isn't a Beach Trip 2020!

We left New Years Day morning. Liz came to my place and we unloaded her stuff and moved it to my trailer. Then we loaded up the boys and off we went! We decided to go cross country schooling at Full Gallop on the way. We chatted and on the way I told Liz that my goal was to do most of the novice fences and maybe a few training fences. I was still reeling from our last XC schoolings. BUT... this was going to be better. It was just Liz and I.... great weather.... new year! And it was a success! Yahoo! We started off and he was a little bit behind my leg, so I fixed it and then we moved on. We did all of the novice stuff that was out and was worth doing. (I didn't bother doing every single novice fence... we skipped the boring novice tables, or the simple novice rolltop, etc). Then we did a few training fences... Not quite an entire training combination in the water... but the training rolltop into the water. We did the sunken road without the jump on the top part. We did the training bank up with a bendy line to the cabin. We did some of the training line in the bottom water. So yay! I started out the day very confident and then as we kept going, I started to lose my nerve a little. By the end, at the water, he got a little sticky in the novice water line... drop in the water, jump up out of the water, to a ramp fence. So rather than jump the training/prelim fence 1, like I had wanted to in the beginnning, we quit when we got a good jump over the ramp. Maybe he was a little tired? Except then the horses in the mare pasture started running and he got all bucky and jumpy. Well....??? But it was still a successful school and we put money in the bank. Then we got them untacked and cooled off and loaded back up and headed to Camelot. We got there in the dark but the parking was better than I remembered, and it was easy to get the trailer in and out. The boys did great and seemed to be besties so we went ahead and put them in together and they seemed quite happy. We found our place and it was great! We had a nice chat and then off to bed. 

Oh Dan!! You are a goober!!