Madison Fairgrounds - Rexburg, Idaho

 County fairgrounds are the go-to place to stop when there are no ranches. campsites, or horse motels available. So, to keep our drive down to under four hours, we are spending the night at the fairgrounds in Rexburg, ID.

The horses are sharing a large corral and seem pretty happy.

It took some searching but we were able to find the water source for our horses, so the horses have water. Water is located next to the arena by the grandstand. Ari found a 50A connection so we could have electricity and not have to run the generator. That's located on the side of the building behind the grandstands. Otherwise, we are drycamping - using water from our trailer's tank and no sewer hook-up. We plan to empty our black and gray water tanks tomorrow morning.

In other news, sometime during our drive from the ranch in Anaconda, MT and the fairgrounds, the electrical box for our bale bucker was damaged.

Pretty sure this is on Ari.

We used bale twine (cowboy duct tape) to re-attach the box to the ladder. I will have to contact the Bale Bucker guy and see about how to get it repaired when we are wintering in Arizona. Luckily, the wiring appears to be intact, but we won't know for certain until we bring down the next bale of hay.

We went grocery shopping and got gas, but when we got back to the fairgrounds it was starting to rain and high winds were picking up.

The trailer is swaying in the wind - which is a bit scary. The sound of the wind, the trailer swaying and watching everything outside moving in a horizontal direction is concerning.

I checked and they are predicting winds up to 55 mph up until 11 tonight. So, of course, I had to check to see how strong the winds need to be to pick up or damage the trailer. The good news is that winds need to be closer to 100 mph to pick up a trailer our size. However, if we were driving, winds of 45 mph and up could pick the trailer. So, now we know if we experience high winds, we need to get off the road and park until the winds die down.

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be back to what passes for normal and we will be heading to Jackson, WY - one of our favorite places to ride.

Fish Creek Ranch - Whitehall, MT

 Once again, Google sent us in the wrong direction. We ended up on a neighbor's property and got an earful from a woman about how we were trespassing. We apologized, explained it was unintentional and got out of there. We found the ranch about thirty minutes later.  There is a small wooden sign for Fish Creek at the intersection with a road sign that says Henderson. None of this is in the listing on horsemotel.com.

It is dusty and hot with no shade.

The horses are sharing a large paddock. Luckily there are a couple of shelters as we are in triple digit temperatures again. The paddock has automatic water so the horses have fresh water, which is nice.

This is our trailer parked on the road before we came into the area to park. No trees, no grass to speak of. It feels like high desert country.

Our host led us on a ride down the dirt road. Her German Shepherd, Ferrox, joined us. My horse was less than happy about the dog. The dog behaved perfectly, but my horse didn't want the dog anywhere close by. Mercy kept pinning his ears at the dog and making his ugly face. But, the dog, being a dog who doesn't speak horse, just happily trotted along.

We saw a herd of wild antelope on the ride, but by the time I got my phone out they were long gone. Antelope move a lot faster than deer.

We have water and electric hook-up. The cell service is spotty at best. That has not prevented our host from charging us $100 a night - the most of any place we have stayed so far.

Normally when someone charges this much, they provide feed and mucking. She isn't even allowing us to throw out our trash - we have to haul it with us.

I am so disappointed in the riding. Our last decent ride was in Riverside State Park, back in Spokane. Two weeks without a decent trail to ride on. This part of Montana is definitely not recommended. 

I am cutting my losses and leaving here a day early. We are heading down into Idaho next. 

Our first night in Idaho will be at a fairgrounds, but at least we will have decent internet. Hoping for better trails in the coming week.

Lampert Ranch - Anaconda, MT

 

Once again Google maps sent us in the wrong direction, but Angel Lampert was able to locate us on the road and guide us into her ranch. We have a FULL hook-up ( sewer, water, and electric) and the horses have a large pasture to hang out.

The pasture is full of shrubbery which is supposedly tasty for horses. They don't seem to mind the shrubbery. 

There are two crab apple trees next to the pasture. I have been picking apples and throwing them around the pasture, so every day we stay here the horses have an Easter egg hunt for apples hidden in the pasture. It keeps the horses entertained.

There are no trails here to speak of. Our first day we rode through the acreage, down by the Clark Fork

River, and by a field of strawberries. No cows or bulls to worry about, but there were holes here and there and it made me nervous that Mercy was going to step into a hole and lose his footing.

After our ride, we went into Butte. Butte is the fifth largest city in Montana, about the same population as Los Gatos. However, there is no charming downtown. It looked pretty depressing with a lot of shuttered buildings and not much going on. 

This bar was probably one of the nicer places in the downtown area. I was enchanted by the leprechaun they placed on their roof.

We took a 90 minute historical tour of downtown Butte, which included a visit to the city jail and a speakeasy from the 1930s. Apparently, Butte was a big place for bootlegging during Prohibition.

Evel Knievel was arrested in Butte when he was 17 for reckless driving. Apparently, the guard on duty had a habit of rhyming the last names of arrestees. When Knievel's family came to bail him out, the guard called out "Knievel, Evil Knievel? You made bail." And, the name stuck.

 

The bar at the speakeasy. The speakeasy is underground and the wall that hid the speakeasy was boarded up by the feds. It was uncovered during a remodel in 2004. All the furniture, glasware, etc. was still there as it had been in the 1930s when it was boarded up.

This is the small band stage.

There is a small window that the bouncer could look through to see who was at the door. It was called a speakeasy because when you came to the door, you were expected to "speak easy" (softly) to gain entrance.

Carrie Nation apparently visited Butte, MT and was escorted out of town by the local sheriff because they weren't interested in her lectures. Carrie Nation led the temperance movement which brought about Prohibition. Her major concern was that the men would drink their wages and abuse their wives and children when they got drunk. She felt that if the men couldn't drink, then the families would do better. 

The ride on our second day was on the dirt road around the ranch. No shade, but I felt safer.

The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas

 On the way to our next stop, we made an easy detour to the The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. It is well worth the stop. There is a small gift shop and a walking garden.

Ari never misses the chance to get a blessing. He asked a monk to provide a blessing that we have a safe journey. The monk told Ari that he (not Ari) was the sixth reincarnation of some famous monk. Ari was suitably impressed and very happy to get the blessing. He got a price of fabric to put in our trailer and one for our truck to protect us.

Throughout the garden are these stones with lovely quotations.

On the perimeter of the garden are these little talismans.

In the distance is a prayer wheel.

Inside each talisman is this figure.

At the center of the garden is this statue.

The back of the statue.

Each buddha has a sponsor and a name.

There is also a small koi pond.

It was a very lovely and peaceful visit. The garden is supposed to bring positivity in a negative world.

The Mystery of the Missing Tail

 

When I took Mercy out to saddle him up for our ride, I noticed the upper part of his tail had some major breakage. This happens when the horse rubs his tail because it is so itchy. He'll scratch on posts, railings, trees, pretty much anything.

Why is his tail so itchy?

One word....parasites.

Twenty years ago, we would deworm our horses monthly. Horses pick up fly eggs and other parasitic eggs when they graze.  They ingest the eggs. The eggs go into the GI tract and hatch into worms or larvae. Then when they poop, the larvae come out to start the cycle all over again. It feels itchy when the larvae come out in the poop. Too many larvae in the gut can make the horse very sick.

But vets no longer recommend monthly deworming. This is because the chemicals used to kill the parasites was causing the parasites to develop immunity. 

So, we had our horses' manure tested by the vet. We gathered a sample of fresh manure, took it to the vet, and the vet looked at it under a microscope. If the tech didn't see a lot of parasites in the manure, we didn't need to regularly deworm.

Because our horses were basically in the same barn, they weren't being exposed to a lot of new and different parasites. So, they didn't need to be dewormed.

But, now we are on the road. Our horses have been in cow pastures, horse pastures, grazing in the forest where deer, elk, and bear poop. They have been exposed to all sorts of new and different parasites. 

So...itchy butt!

Dewormer basically is a paste, about the consistency of toothpaste. Most dewormers have flavorings added, usually to make it taste like apples, so the horses don't spit it out.

You basically squirt a tube into the horse's mouth. The horse swallows the paste. The medicine goes into their GI tract and kills the parasites. Not all of the parasites, but enough to eliminate the itchiness.

We will be deworming monthly from now on.

It is a good idea to use a different dewormer each month. Different brands have different formulas and affect the parasites differently. By rotating the dewormers we can attack different parasites and also reduce the chance that the parasites build up immunity.

Some horses don't like having a tube stuck in their mouth and being force fed a bunch of medicine. To get around that, fill an empty tube with apple sauce and use that instead of medicine. Now the horse sees the tube and thinks - applesauce! yummy! I would give one tube of applesauce on day 1. On day 2 I would give the medicine. On day 3 I would give applesauce. Now the horse thinks odds are in favor of applesauce and he will no longer fight getting the medicine.

So, our horses don't argue about getting dewormed...after all, it might be applesauce. 

Hopefully, Mercy's tail recovers in a few months.

Day Two at the Windmill Cattle Ranch

 

Scott, the owner, offered that we could ride in the cow pastures since there aren't any trails nearby, so this morning we went into the cow pasture. We figured we would just ride along the perimeter by the fencing and stay out of the way of the cattle. We have ridden through herds before and most of the time the cows ignore us. This time a bull decided we were on his turf and decided to charge us. Our horses were not happy about being charged, so we skedaddled out of the pasture to safety.

So, we decided to ride on one of the side roads just to get the horses some exercise.

The mountains here are gorgeous.

There actually was a small side trail one of the homeowners had made to ride on with a sign called Artesian Trail. It was a lovely trail that ended at a small fish pond. It was maybe a quarter mile trail, but it was a nice diversion.

The ranch has it's own trout pond you can fish in and it is really beautiful.

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, the ranch hosts a roping clinic so the locals can practice their skills. Ari & I set out lounge chairs and watched the action. These cows are so used to being used for roping practice they are not really concerned at all. Ari & I cheered on the cows. We weren't allowed to ride since we don't rope, but we enjoyed watching.