with Horse and Hound

Better Living Through Titanium Road Trip, Last of Seven Parts

In February 2024, I started a road trip to hunt my way across the US and back after finally being cleared to ride again after back surgery. I hunted to Pennsylvania before returning west to hunt my way home to Nevada.

Juan Tomas Hounds kennel fixture in the wet snow. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

I left Mission Valley Hunt Club in Kansas on March 14 to travel to the Juan Tomas Hounds Closing Meet in New Mexico. There is no interstate from Kansas City to Albuquerque, so it was a long day of back roads. Past the Flint Hills and open prairie of Kansas, through the Oklahoma panhandle, just skirting inside the corner of West Texas, to finally reach the Land of Enchantment.

Pronghorn dotted the sides of the roads. Yucca and tumbleweed started to dominate the landscape as I crossed the many rivers, including the Rio Grande looking more like a creek than a river, with the ground finally getting some character instead of the endless flat. Unknown to me, I had driven through the Llano Estacado, also called the Staked Plains, famous for its large mesas.

Of all the days of driving I had on my trip, this day behind the wheel seemed the longest yet. I finally made it to Magdalena, New Mexico, and the little motel that could on the Magdalena Mountain Range (a southern spur of the Rocky Mountains). Juan Tomas Hounds’ closing meet was a joint meet with Big Sky Hounds, who are based in Montana. Big Sky’s Angela Murray, MFH and huntsman, and her members and I were all staying at a modest little motel. I think we had the entire place of six rooms rented out.

2024 Joint Meet with Big Sky Hounds and Juan Tomas Hounds in New Mexico. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

Juan Tomas Hounds at Kennels Fixture on March 15-17, 2024 Magdalena, New Mexico at an Elevation of 6,600 in the Rocky Mountains

Adrian Nance, the MFH and huntsman for Juan Tomas Hounds, lives on the Field Ranch between Albuquerque and Magdalena. The ranch is in the middle of several reservations, mostly Navajo Nation, so there is no quick way to drive to his kennels. Magdalena is also significantly higher in elevation than the ranch, so each morning the drive was to drop down the “hill” and endure the ever-changing weather patterns. And what weather patterns we had.

I have hunted all over the country and experienced several kinds of mud. The gumbo mud found in Montana while hunting with Big Sky Hounds looks to have bentonite clay in its make-up, and is very deep and treacherous, especially if encountered on a hillside. The worst mud I’ve ever encountered is the buckshot mud of the Mississippi River delta while out with Longreen Foxhounds. The silt from the river is a weapons-grade material, as it will take the paint off your truck if you let it dry before hosing off. And it will dry to concrete in the hounds’ pads if not removed while still wet.

Big Sky Hounds member Larua Romfh tacked up in the New Mexico mud at the Juan Tomas joint meet. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

But this New Mexico mud? This was a close contender. They say that mud from snow is worse than mud from rain, and I have to agree. Especially when it rains, sleets, and snows every day, sometimes at the same time, for one long weekend in the New Mexico desert. Despite Mother Nature not wanting to let go of winter, Amy Nance, Adren’s wife, had organized a wonderful weekend for Juan Tomas Hounds and Big Sky Hounds, hosting about 25 people in her house for each hunt breakfast and dinner every night. She even provided a few breakfasts as the weather stranded some at the ranch from the motel. The weekend included three days of hunting, bonfires, and meals in the Nance’s house, with a bonus of Guinness Floats (Guinness beer and ice cream) for Saint Patrick’s Day on Sunday.

Amy Nance looks out over the kennel fixture of the Juan Tomas Hounds. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.
Big Sky Hounds’ Angela Murray, MFH and huntsman, along with Richard Pye, MFH, and Amy Nance of Juan Tomas Hounds head out for the first day of hunting. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

The morning of the first hunt from the kennels, Adren went out to catch his family’s horses turned out in a 2,300-acre field. And surprisingly, he found them. We hunted that day at 3:00 pm. The forecast predicted an incoming snow system with 70 mph winds to hit that afternoon. The temperature was around 40 degrees with windchill in the 20s on this cold and grey day. The hounds hit fast and hard that afternoon.

I took the side-by-side out to follow the hunt instead of riding because I simply didn’t want to ride in that weather. I lost the hunt in the first five minutes and never found them again. Driving by myself in the sleet, and wind, over an unknown country covered in rapidly deepening mud my biggest fear was getting stuck. Or going off into an arroyo. Not my finest moment.

One of the many arroyos that carve into the country at the kennel fixture of the Juan Tomas Hounds. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

I learned the hard way that the side-by-side I was driving didn’t like to start when it got hot. I waited over an hour after one unlucky stop while trying to hear hounds. Like getting stranded in the kennel truck with Wateree Hounds in South Carolina on the bank of the Wateree River, I sat listening to the quiet snow-covered desert in New Mexico. While being stranded, without a radio, by myself in an unknown country, barely able to determine in which way lay the kennels, I wasn’t all that upset. I realized that I had the margaritas.

The second morning, the weather was about the same as the day before, just less wind. I started out riding one of Angela’s hirelings. But my back and its new titanium spine had declared that enough was enough. I had made the entire six-week trip without any back pain until that high desert snow system. I lasted ten minutes until I called it. Beth Nance, Adren’s mother, went back with me to the kennels. Then we took the Whoopie Wagon to meet the hunt at the Pinion House.

Chollo cactus in the kennel fixture of the Juan Tomas Hounds. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

The Pinion House holds the water source for the Nance Ranch. The spring water goes from the underground source through a pipe into a buried railroad car with a pump. The pump is on a timer and every so often during the day it pumps the three and a half miles to their house. The buried railroad car has a famous past: Geronimo himself was known to drink from it, drinking from the same ladle that we used that day.

The third day was Saint Patrick’s Day, and the weather was still trying to impress us. I didn’t go outside at all that day; I just went straight to the Nance’s house from the motel while most everyone else rode out. As a few of us who valued warmth over misery waited by the fire for the hunt to come back, we heard that Mama Beth did not come back to the meet with the rest of the hunt. She had gone in by herself, much earlier than everyone else. Yet she was not at home, nor was her horse. Que the panic search. Beth strolled in about an hour later, leading her hunt mare, after walking several miles in the mud. She hadn’t fallen, she just couldn’t get back on after dismounting. Someone suggested to Adren that he needed to have his mama carry a radio. Adren replied, “Do you think I have any control over what that woman does?” Beth Nance is a force of nature.

After everyone was accounted for, and thawed out by the Nance’s fireplace, we shared Guinness Floats and a warm meal. The weekend was a bit of a bust for me as I didn’t ride, but the hunting was great each day. Several coyotes were put to ground, and the chases were always fast and fun.

Adren Nance, MFH and huntsman for Juan Tomas Hounds, and Angela Murray, MFH and huntsman for Big Sky Hounds, during their joint meet. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

A Cross-Country Trip at a Glance

My #BetterLivingThroughTitanium trip at the end of last season was a trip to remember. After several years out of the saddle, my surgeon allowed me to ride again on February 1. So naturally I hunted with Sierra Nevada Hounds outside of Reno, Nevada in the spitting snow on February 2. Then I headed east on February 8. After overnighting in Las Vegas, during the Super Bowl media frenzy to my chagrin, I made it to New Mexico many hours late after dealing with snow storms in Arizona. I hunted in a blizzard with Caza Ladron outside Santa Fe on February 10 and then blue skies over snow with Juan Tomas Hounds outside Albuquerque the next day. The two long days driving to Georgia took me on a tour of the Deep South to spend the week hunting at the Belle Meade Hunt Week from Valentine’s Day to February 18. The weather was perfect the whole week. Bonus, I got to attend their hunt ball at the golf course where The Masters tournament is held.

From there I went to Camden, South Carolina to go out with Wateree Hounds on a bluebird day by the Wateree River on February 20. I spent the next day with a friend in North Carolina on Carolina Beach. From the Atlantic, I went to Louisa, Virginia to spend the next three weeks with friends, mostly in the rain. Three weeks wasn’t the original plan, but the entire household catching COVID at the Keswick Hunt Club’s hunt ball changed my calendar. While in Virginia and testing negative for COVID, I went out with Thorton Hill Hounds and Keswick Hunt Club, attended an outrider seminar for the upcoming steeplechase season, went shopping for hunt ball auction items (always more fun to spend other people’s money), and finally had lunch with the legend that is Norman Fine. On March 8, I rode in the Vixen Hunt for Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds following the Olympian Boyd Martin during a gorgeous day in Pennsylvania. That weekend I had the flu because COVID wasn’t enough. Finally, I started my drive home to Nevada.

From Virginia, I overnighted in Kentucky at the Cerulean Farm, a lovely breeding farm famous for its Irish Draughts. Then I had a fun hunt with Mission Valley Hunt Club outside Kansas City, Kansas on March 13 on a warm, sunny day. After spending the night in western Kansas with an ex-riding student now grown up to be an accomplished photographer, I continued back down to New Mexico. My trip’s last hunt was with a joint meet of Big Sky Hounds and Juan Tomas Hounds on their Closing Meet over Saint Patrick’s Day weekend during a very wet winter storm system. I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time on my way home to Nevada, and then Lake Meade National Park where I overnighted by the Hoover Dam. From the elevation changes from over 7,000 feet to zero, blizzards to beautiful spring days, and riding a different hunt horse each time over almost every kind of country possible in the United States, our hunt community helped me celebrate the fact that new titanium let me avoid life in a wheelchair. What a trip.

The artesian well behind the kennels at Juan Tomas Hounds. Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

Things in the road

Over six weeks in February and March, I drove by myself around 7,500 miles. As much as I loved to see old and new friends and to remember how to hunt again, I also loved the road trip. I kept track of the various things I saw on the road on this trip, and it ran the gambit. Nevada showed off its large population of mustangs just hanging out, visible from the road. The Kit Fox that crossed in front of my car outside of Las Vegas was a first for me to spy. Santa Fe, New Mexico had my friend Jay and I slowing the rig down in the pre-dawn light to wait for a brace of coyotes to cross the road.

The road from New Mexico to North Carolina, while long, was uneventful. But then the travel gods made up for it by putting a full-sized ladder in the middle of the fast lane of the interstate TWICE in one day on the way from North Carolina to Virginia. I had to swerve into the medium, going over the speed limit I must admit, to avoid hitting a ladder in North Carolina and then again in Virginia. Two in one day!

Red foxes showed off by crossing in front of my car both in Virginia and Pennsylvania. On the way to Kansas from Kentucky, Missouri had a yard sale with suitcases and a large cooler scattered in the middle of my lane. New Mexico had a wayward bull on the shoulder of the road that fortunately stayed put, but later in my lane were random portions of a large stove pipe that were dropped like Legos over several miles.

In Arizona, I saw a large cow elk sleeping on the side of the road near the big hole in the ground that everyone talks about, aka The Grand Canyon. And closer to home I saw two new animals I’d never seen in Nevada: big horn sheep on a cliff high above the road on Walker Lake, looking like they were contemplating jumping straight down on top of my car, and the famous wild burros roaming the streets in Beaty, Nevada. What a country we have.

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