Our Equine Affaire Experience

Anxiously I waited for the bus to drop the kids off. This was the day, we, Brooke, Sharon and I, were heading off on our trip. It had been planned for months. The maps were printed, gas topped off, bags packed, medications packed, snacks and drinks, we were ready.

A tearful good-bye to my youngest along with one more check over the bus drop off at Nana's and we were off.

Yay, I thought, we were going to make to it the border in daylight. That was my plan. Last time we went across the border, it was the first time I had driven across and it was raining, dark, foggy and for some reason I was scared out of my wits. This time we were going to make it in daylight. We only stopped once, to get a Harvey's burger for dinner. That was a treat and it didn't take long as we went through the drive through, only about 15 minutes.

About 15 minutes from the border we noticed that we needed to turn the lights on, it was dark, it was raining and again for some reason I was terrified going across the border. Had we left just 1/2 hour earlier we would have had daylight. We had no problems other than an idiot driver cutting us off as we wavered back and forth along the road trying to decide where we supposed to be. The lanes are not well defined. We crossed, knew this time that we needed to go to the right to avoid oncoming traffic, again, no lanes but also not much in the way of traffic.

For some reason there was no neon sign pointing the way to Equine Affaire, so we had to wing it and head west on I90. Took the wrong turn for the inn we had picked out and ended up staying at an Econo Lodge, which surprisingly was very comfortable.

The rest of the trip was good other than I forgot or lost the trip tick and still don't know where I packed it. I did have driving directions from mapquest and the navigation system[NS] in Mom's van. Kind of funny thing happened, mapquest and NS do not follow the same route. It seems to kind of make the NS a little frustrated when you don't turn the way she says, we had fun with that a little bit.

Still fighting with the NS we found our Inn, forgot my US credit card. No problem though, I had given it too the lady over the phone and though she wasn't supposed to, she let us stay.

Rested for a while, decided to check out the pool. Too bad I didn't check before hand, the pool is closed til middle of May but we were still allowed to use the whirlpool. Yahoo.

Really good, amazingly good, breakfast included in our stay. Scrambled eggs, bacon, waffles, yogurt, fruit, cereal, muffins, toast, bagel and juice or coffee.

We watched Chris Cox the first and second day, he is an exceptional clinician. The first day he talked about getting the horse to lower his head. Teaching the horse to find his headset and establishing a cue for it. The next day I thought we were going to be watching him deal with a bucking horse but no, that was on the day we were leaving so we watched him help a couple horses with lead changes. Following the clinic he gave a reining demonstration on his horse, Pepto, that left Sharon and I with tears running down our cheeks. I know, I know. Brooke was slightly embarrassed.

We also got to see a little bit of John Lyons, he explained a few exercises to help with speed control and also introduced his sons Josh and Michael. I didn't even know he had 2 sons. We got to see Jana and their new baby Ryder, what a sweet little fella. They are a very family oriented business. Nice people.

Stacy Westfall discussed improving steering and teaching neck reining. She gave a good exercise to practice involving cones. She is a good clinician as well.

The shopping was phenominal but not really inexpensive, just so much to choose from.

We really enjoyed the Pfizer Fantasia show on Friday night. A hitch of 8 haflingers entertained us at the beginning along with the OhioDrill Team. John Lyons brought in Preacher and Charlie, Tommy Garland riding a Texas Longhorn Steer, Aaron ? doing a reining demonstration, Dutch Warmblood doing a dressage demonstration, a lady riding an Andalusian doing some kind of dance with a stick, very good but I can't remember what it is called, something like garrocha?? The Donnert brothers juggling on horseback, the Icelandic riders, a team of 4 welsh ponies demonstrating their cart racing around obstacles, a family did some mounted shooting and trick riding and finally one of the Donnert brothers did a skit with an appaloosa horse "Chief Bear Paw" the 4th[amazing].

There were so many things to see and I only saw a handful. I guess we will have to go back next year. Maybe next year I will have a better idea of how to go across the border.