Last year while attending the Parelli Natural Horsemanship conference in Pagosa Springs, CO,  my neighbor Laura and I signed up for a 1-week course that started in September 2009. It seemed a long way off at the time, but here it is Sept 8 2009 and we are just about on our way. My horse Cowboy and Laura's horse Dexter will be coming along. We've spent the last few weeks preparing the horses, the trailer and ourselves. The horses' diets have been changed (a couple of times!) and the trailer has been turned into our rolling palace. We'll be spending a few nights sleeping in the trailer along the way.

The plan is to leave this Friday, Sept 11 at 7 a.m. (yawn!). This means that the horses should be fed by 5:30 a.m. so they can finish their breakfast. Laura has generously volunteered for this duty as she is an early riser and they may actually get fed on time.  Then we load the boys up and hit the road. After one or two stops to let the boys rest their legs from road vibration, we'll get to Suzie Creek Arabians close to Elko, NV where we will spend our first night--should take 9-10 hours to get there. The boys will have outdoor pens and we'll sleep in the gooseneck part of the trailer.  Similar plan for the next day (Saturday) and we'll spend the night in Moab at the Old Spanish Trail center. Then we leave early Sunday for Pagosa Springs where we need to check in at the Parelli Center between 9 a.m. and noon. It will take around 4 hours to get there. After we check in and get the horses settled in their paddocks, our class will have an orientation. After all that, we will finally get to unhitch the trailer and take the truck into town to our home away from home at the Econo Lodge. The rest of the week we'll be getting to the Parelli Center early to feed the horses, then we get our breakfast (and all our other meals) provided by Parelli and start our class. The focus of this class is Finesse Riding and I think there will be both classroom work and riding.  There will be some free time to play with the horses using the Parelli facility which is set up like one big playground for horse lovers, including a swimming pond where you can take a dip with your equine buddy.

We'll be heading out Friday afternoon and do the same trip in reverse, arriving back home in Sebastopol late afternoon Sunday the 20th.

Laura's husband Ken will be staying home taking care of their menagerie. He is trying to act like he'll be lonely but ever so often a little grin appears. He will be sending us off with his fabulous barbecued chicken in the ice chest, accompanied by lots of carefully chosen beer. We also have a good supply of chocolate and I think there is room in the ice chest for some healthy food.

Thanks to my neighbor Ann for watching over my kitty Patches while we're gone!

I'll be trying to post to this on the trip. I will probably not have internet access along the road so it may be the 20th before I have a chance.