In the past few years, when we have headed out for what I call a "Dave Thompson Adventure Ride", it usually goes like this: We start out saying that it'll just be a short ride, something really easy for the young horse I'm riding. Then somehow we find ourselves lost in the wilderness, sometimes with scratches and scrapes across my face and hands an...
Summer has arrived. I switched out my t-shirt for a long sleeved cotton shirt, to protect my arms from the sun. Carol picked us up a little after noon and we drove out to the Greenhorn gulch trail head. This was a new trailer for Prestigious. It's a nice big stock trailer, but there are no dividers in it and there was a new horse in there. I put Ro...
This horse is so smart. I have ridden almost every day, sometimes little shorty rides and sometimes bigger challenging rides. This is about one ride, about a week ago. David and I loaded up the horses and drove down and picked up Martina and her "V" horse, El Tejon. We went out to a canyon that I'd never been to before. We rode out through a ...
It was a long time before I saw Commotion again. A year and a half. So much had happened. He'd gone off with a sweet woman that spent her summers in Wyoming and winters in Southern California. Together they rode many happy miles together. Somehow though, he was back at Varian Arabians and back up on the sale page. It was right before Christmas. "He...
"Are you sure you feel like going? We could just go to breakfast maybe." I could hear by the smallness of her voice that she wasn't feeling very strong. "No, I need to get out there." I smiled. "Okay, I'll be there at 9:30 to pick you up." I have to admit, I was eager to show her how well Commotion would do after his summer experiences but more tha...
After an oil change and a check up on the trailer brakes and lights, it was time to go. As I loaded my things into the trailer, a mental movie played in my head about the summer and what Commotion V taught me and what I was able to give to him. There were a number of rides that we took that I did not write a story about. One day we focused simply o...
August 22, Saturday This would be our last ride of the summer together. Our route would be up the East Fork of the Hyndeman creek to Pioneer Cabin and down Johnstone Creek, a nice loop of about twelve miles. I called Martina on our way to pick up Carol and the horses, and with very short notice, she met us at East Fork road and we drove out across ...
August 15. Our 23rd anniversary Carol wanted to drive her big fancy new truck today, which delighted us because our old Ford has about a billion miles on it and the drive up Trail Creek Road to Summit Creek is a hard pull up a steep crazy road. Should have named that road Vertigo Road. The trail starts right out with a simple creek crossing and the...
Friday, July 24. There's a funny little place north of Ketchum where an rustic old store sits on the side of the road. Behind it is a number of little cabins and trailers. The place whispers of early Ketchum and the 1960's. "North Fork Store" is what the sign reads, but the store is long closed and I'm always curious about the people that live back...
Sheila wrote to me after that ride to Grand Jean. "Great story Lisa!!! Can't call you a scardy cat! I love your reports and pictures... I agree, that would have been too big a step for Commotion. Thanks Sheila" I loved the idea that I was getting her out of her big brown chair, even if only in her imagination. Thursday, July 14 9:00 AM. Still a bit...
August 7. For days I fretted whether to take Commotion on our three day girls trip to the back country. It could be a good experience for him, but I feared it might be over his head. The trails up there are gnarly and ragged, and if he could not handle it, the repercussions could be pretty tragic. Finally I determined that if I was this doubt...
July 3 and 4. The fourth of July weekend can be such a nuisance, so many people, so much noise, so on impulse, we hustled to the grocery store, loaded up the horses and headed up over Galena Summit to the Stanley Basin once again. There were plenty of people camping here and there, but here in Idaho there are so many single camp sites, and sure en...
Wednesday, July 1 We arrived at a place that I can't even tell you where it was because it doesn't have a name. We parked near a single campsite on the east side of Highway 75 about half way between Billy's Bridge and Phantom Hill. Wide open spaces, forests thick with aspen trees, beautiful green meadows sprinkled with wild flowers called to us fr...
June 28, Sunday 8:00 AM and already it was very warm. My phone buzzed as I was watching my Sunday morning program. It was Carol inviting me to go ride before the heat really kicked in. We settled on Eagle Creek, where we'd had our first ride with Commotion and all that angst with the water crossing. We wriggled the trailer into a parking slot amids...
June 23 Big Basin. Aptly named. The last mile of road before you get to the trail head is a skinny twisty road, one lane only, with a steep high drop off on the right. It's a little intimidating because heaven forbid you should run into a horse trailer coming the other way. Turning around to park is another challenge, with a four horse trailer loa...
June 21 The temperature at Smiley Creek, where we were headed, was 34 degrees. It was only 8:00AM but I knew it would take some time to gas up the truck and get ourselves up there. By the time we saddled the horses, near Chemeketan campground, it was almost 10:00 and 50 degrees. No wind. Perfect. Quiet. Peaceful. My main objection of the day was to...
Don't you love it when your horse trots over to greet you when you walk in the gate? Armed with a new set of shoes, we were ready to get back out there. I tied Commotion and Roy to the trailer where we saddled them up. This was the first time I'd saddled him tied to the trailer, which is a different deal for a horse than cross ties. Sometimes they ...
David backed the trailer into the open area at the trail head, insuring that we could get out when we left, and leaving plenty of room for anybody else that might show up at Eagle Creek. It was a beautiful Wednesday morning. Eagle creek is a great first ride for a young horse. It's a pretty boring road ride, but beautiful, and not very well known, ...
Jaime handed me the reins and I reached up and stroked his long brown neck. His eyes were alert and bright. He looked at me straight. Little perfect ears pointing forward. "He's a little hotter than what you're used to" Sheila said. I raised my eyebrows to her. "His breeding is for the show ring, he's a trotting horse. His bloodline can be pretty h...
Seven degrees this morning. Looking out the window at the white landscape as the sun came up, I said to myself, "hey, I'm not the only one out there that can't ride all winter!" I don't have a toasty indoor arena, and I'm really not much into arena riding anyway. Sure, I sometimes like to work on precise skills and break things down to practice and...
