2014 Beach Trip

BEACH TRIP 2014!!!!!

Missy and I had another amazing trip! We went back to Camelot Farms at St. Helena Island for our beach trip. We missed this place! It's just so peaceful and soul soothing. The boys hauled great and we got settled right in to our double wide and double paddock. The first day we got there a bit late so we just got the boys unloaded and went and got our trail passes and went for dinner. I wanted oysters but the Oyster house was out. :( So I had crab legs. Yum!

 

The second day we got up and fed the boys and went and visited Taylor at her barn. It's a nice place, just down the road. So then we went for a hack down Coffin Point Road. Such a pretty place. We didn't go all the way to the beach, but just went for a short hack while we waited for the tide to go back out at Hunting Island.

  Coffin Point Road
After a lunch break and a snack break for the ponies we loaded them up and headed to the beach. Yay!!! The ponies were a bit silly with the waves again but not as bad as the first time. We had fun riding and taking photos. Then after getting the boys settled we went out for more yummy seafood. We had an awesome dinner at Dockside. Their she crab soup is as good as the Optimist!! Yummy!!! And the oysters weren't bad either. Then Missy and I split some really yummy fish and grits.

Beach Cam!


The next day we got up early for sunrise and took photos on the beach with the boys. We even got brave and took their halters off and got "wild and free" photos! It was amazing! The dolphins were out too. We saw so many! It was so amazing!!!

Yep... that's a dolphin splashing in the waves!! I just caught him as we was diving back under.

Then the beaufortpics guy on Facebook saw us out there and took our picture and put it on his facebook site. :) We're famous!!

After our amazing morning we headed back home and dropped the boys off for a snack. Then we headed to the Shrimp Shack and ate shrimp burgers! Oh my goodness!!! Amazing!! They were so delicious. We headed back out to the beach again for our photo shoot with Theo. Missy loaned me a dress that Marty had worn to a wedding so I got to be fancy! And we were bareback the whole time so Fleck and I had fun playing around and being goofy while Missy was getting her pictures done. It was a great day! We did lots of riding to get to the driftwood again for pictures.

After all of our "modeling" we were hungry!! We had a great dinner at another restaurant... Frog something or other. The oysters here were the best yet! And then that night it was the last of the meteor showers for the year. So we drove out to the pier on the marsh and sat in the back of the truck and watched the meteor shower. It was amazing!! The stars were so beautiful and we must have seen about 30 shooting stars, some even with tails. Truly an amazing and epic day! One I will remember always!

We opted to get up early on our last day so we could enjoy the beach again. What a fun morning. We got some beautiful sunrise photos and then had a blast riding on the beach. We went down to the driftwood again and jumped some of it. And then we did some beach gallops. Just a fun fun day playing on the beach!

Beach Galloping!

It was truly another amazing trip with my amazing partner/friend/soulmate. We had so much fun and I can't wait to do it again.

Full Gallop

I decided to take Fleck to Full Gallop's schooling horse trial one weekend after Pine Top because he was on a roll. I wanted to do their Prelim course and prove that we could. That it was just my horrid riding or something. And I knew it was pushing it because it was a one day and it was only one week after Pine Top, but there was lots of rain so the footing was great. And he was really feeling good. He pretty much got that week off too. And since I was going, I figured I could take Dan too and do another two dressage tests. Ha!!! That was not my best idea. ;) The two of them together were awful!!! So we got there later on Friday but I managed to have time to ride both of them briefly. I'm really glad I got Dan ridden! He was pretty decent despite being squirmy and silly. But while I was riding him Fleck was carrying on and kicking and managed to break one board in his stall and pry two more partially off. Jeesh Fleck!!! So then I rode Fleck and he spent the whole time neighing and trying to get back to Dan. Gracious....

 

 The next morning I was able to turn them both out briefly in the paddock and they got to run a bit. It was a busy busy day. First up was Fleck. We got tacked up and went and did our dressage. It was far enough away that he was pretty good. He spent the whole time in warm up neighing just under his breath. Hee hee. It was so cute! He was trying so hard to be good.... but he couldn't help himself from neighing. He was quiet in the test and we had a lovely test! Nothing amazing but quite a nice test, especially for us. We managed to get one of our better scores (32.8 I think) and that put us in first place out of 3! Yay! Granted, it was a schooling show and it was probably the other two people's first prelims, but still. Actually, it may have been one girls but the other girl said she and her 17 year old mare had done prelim. Way cool! So then I had a short break and was able to walk XC and stadium again.
Then it was time to jump! Fleck was awful in warm up because it was so close to the barns. I was ready to just get in the ring and go. We had the first rail down. It blended in and was vertical and I didn't ride it like my plan. But after that we were clean. Though it was a tough ride. He wasn't nearly as good as he is at Ashland when he knows Dan is in the trailer. He was very wiggly and I just couldn't get myself settled on him. I was bouncing around a lot. Sigh... so much for working on my position. But we managed to get around not too horribly and only had the one rail. The poor other girls had an awful time... they were both eliminated for stops and rails. :(

Fleck's stadium Round

So then I went on to XC. Fleck was so distracted still but I was hoping once we got rolling, he'd lock on and realize what we were doing. We started off well and he was jumping fine, abeit awfully long and flat. I was having a hard time getting him in a good jumping canter but we did okay. We came down the hill to the trakenher and I just couldn't get him together enough. Or I chickened out. I don't know. But we had a stop. Argh!!! So I circled and funny enough.. it didn't even freak me out really at this point. I was more just pissed and thinking... "what the heck... this isn't that big or scary!". So we jumped it just fine the second time and carried on. The rest of the course was pretty similar to the course we retried on last time but not quite. We got all the way to the up bank to the skinny bounce and he was FLYING up the hill.... "DAN!!!! I"M COMING!!!!". I didn't even think about it, but the bounce bank was angled just slightly to the right, so Fleck was going for Fleck and just glanced off to the left as he went up the bank. We totally ran into the flag. Twit!! So I circled and closed my left leg and he jumped it just fine. Then he was totally veering back to the barns but I managed to get him going to the right again and we finished the course. He jumped the big scary skinny upright corner like a boss though!!
It certainly wasn't a pretty round. And I wasn't really happy with it because he felt like he was dragging me over things and not jumping as nicely. And obviously I was bummed about the two stops. Though I do think the first one was all me and the second one, while I should have anticipated and close my leg, was because he was so distracted. So... despite the rail, time and two stops, we were the only person to finish in the prelim division so we won. doh! But we did FINISH that prelim course so yay! It was set up exactly like the last recognized trial, so yay us!!

Trail Ride in Helen

Ackkkk!!! Somebody else is on my precious Fleck!!! It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I let some special people ride Flecky. :) Lisa is one of those. She came to visit and I met her up near Dahlonega with both boys. She rode Fleck and I rode Dan. Dan was pretty good and Fleck was a star as usual. :)

We had a great time. We went to Fausett Trails and it was a nice place. Good parking lot with a wash rack and water. The trails were pretty cool. STEEP though!! It was some serious hill work. But many of the trails were wide enough to go side by side on, which is great. And lots of different loops. We picked a shorter loop because it was so steep and I didn't want Dan to get tired and have it not be fun. He's not as fit as Fleck. Although even Fleck was a little out of breath up some of those steeper hills. Some serious hill work! But we had fun. It was a 2 hour haul, but it would be worth going again.

Day off???

So Fleck was supposed to get today off. But I needed to ride Dan before tomorrow. When I went to get Dan, he was at the creek and Fleck was in the front field. Fleck heard me and neighed at me but I told him to enjoy the day. He hung out in the front field until I was loading Dan up and then he came neighing his fool head off and cantering up to the gate. TAKE ME TAKE ME TAKE ME!!!!!!!!! So I had to. How could I resist?! He about jumped into the trailer. :)

So we went for a nice easy walk ride. No being "on the bit", no rules... just a nice long walk. It was a beautiful day and I'm glad I got to ride him. Especially since Lisa will be riding him tomorrow. (We're both so alike... I think he was more jealous that Dan was going without him... and tomorrow I'm going to be jealous that Lisa is riding him and not me). Ha! Two peas in a pod. 

But seriously.. it was too gorgeous of a December day to NOT ride the Fleckinator!

 

Pine Top Thanksgiving!

Such a great show!!! I always love this show.... so many fun people there, such fun course, and such a fun atmosphere. :) Of course it helps that Fleck was amazing this weekend too. :)

We got to Pine Top on Friday and I went ahead and jumped on because I was running out of daylight. Fleck was horrible! He was bolting and running and wouldn't bend to the right. It was very frustrating. I tried very hard to ride well and encourage the bend and finally got somewhere so we quit. I then decided to adjust him and I'm glad I did. He had a bunch of cranial ribs out, his poll was out, and his usual sacroiliac stuff. He did a good bit of licking and chewing so he must have enjoyed it. I took him for a little walk and got all settled for Saturday. 

 Suprisingly I slept great! I had to braid in the morning because I didn't have braiding bands and as I tied him to the trailer to braid the sun came up over the barn and was totally blnding me. It was completely in my eyes as I went down his neck. Doh! Oh well. He was braided. I warmed him up and he felt amazing!! He was so soft and supple and relaxed. And he could bend around my right leg. Yay chiropractic!! I was giggling because I ran into a friend and told her I rode right after Andrew Palmer, the Olympic rider. She said my smile was better. :) Bonus points, right?! :) So anyways, we went in and did our test. And I thought it was pretty darn good! He was supple for the majority of it and we did everything where we were supposed to. He was a little earthbound at times and needed to be more extravagent but I was quite proud. I figured that because we were riding under Sandy and right after Andrew, no pressure...not like we stood a chance. ;) But you know... we scored decently. 36.9 I think. Under Sandy. So really not bad. That put us in 6th out of 9. 

 

Fleck got to rest before stadium and I went to walk the course. It looked super fun!! I warmed him up and because Beth couldn't make it, I was on my own. But I managed to do pretty well. There was a giant oxer set up, but I decided not to bother with it. The fences in the ring weren't that big and there was no sense in busting our confidence. We jumped the smaller oxer, the vertical, and the cross rail. He was getting rather long or rather short to the oxer so I fixed it. :) Yay me! I needed to push but not lengthen and I managed to do it. He felt really good so we chilled and then headed into the ring. It wasn't perfect, but it was good!! I managed to stay with him for most of the jumps and the ones that weren't perfect, I was able to sit up and ride properly after and fix them. Yay!! So no rails :) He was jumping great! It was a fun course with lots of roll backs. We recieved a lot of compliments and even Mark said my position looked great and I was flowing with Fleck. :) yay!! We ended up moving up to 3rd after our double clear stadium round. :) We were only 3 points out of first and 0.3 points behind Andrew. (We won't mention that he was riding a green stallion, just mention that he's an Olympic rider!). 

I walked XC and it looked pretty good. Nothing very technical at all but lots of big fences. I swear some of them had been on the prelim course before. And fence 3 was the big open oxer in the bank field that had been boarded up top after the horse fell in it. Yikes!!! It was a bit scary. But it looked better the second time. 

XC morning was a gorgeous morning! We geared up and off we went. I decided to get on and get him down there early so I could warm him up slowly and gradually. Yeah... Fleck had other ideas. He had two speeds - gallop and jig in place! Doh. He was amped up! I tried to warm him up slowly but he was not having it. So we went ahead and cantered (or galloped....) and jumped a few. He was dragging me over them and looking for more. They still had the huge gray table flagged and Tawn had jumped it... so we did to. As soon as I picked up the reins, he burst into the gallop, so I just let him go and he flew over that big table. A few minutes later they unflagged it so I'm glad we did it. I figured at this point, he was good to go and I'd leave him wanting more. So we jigged in place and finally chilled a bit. Finally it was our turn!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and have a great ride!!! We were off. He flew out of that start box and tore over the first fence. (Which was fairly impressive)! I managed to get him somewhat under control and over fence 2. Then we galloped up to fence 3 and I knew it would be fine. He soared over it like a pro. The rest of the course was awesome. He was going and I just pointed and we went. He jumped everything well. The angles were great, the mound/roller coaster was great, the corner was a breeze, and he even jumped keenly into the water. He felt great and wasn't breathing hard and we came home well within time. In fact, even slowing him down a bit, we were only 10 seconds from speeding tickets. WHOOO HOOO!!!

We ended up moving up to 2nd because Andrew's stallion had two stops. Way to go Flecky!! I was so proud of him. He was just on fire and having a blast! :) 
 And he thinks he deserves a beer. ;)

So yay! We're going to go to Full Gallop and run prelim while he's feeling good. I think that I should probably give him some time off in the Summer instead of the Winter since he seems to be tolerating the cold better than the heat. (Not that it was cold... it was 70 degrees! But the humidity really seems to bother him). 

I'm so blessed!!!