shipping horses

John makes a sign for the truck window: East Coast or Bust

Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy and excellent photography, FHL decided to go along for the ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel.

Beth was the one who first noticed.

Since Utah on the way out, we’ve been in high desert sierra or rocky mountain morraine. It is beautiful out west, but verdant and lush it isn’t.

Yesterday we stopped over at a horse hotel just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’ve grown accustomed to the western horse-keeping style: outdoor covered stall attached to a twelve-by-twelve-square-foot paddock. And that’s all. No communal pastures, not a blade of grass, no group turnout. It’s not wrong or bad, just different.

Ali and Kit (with Betsy) pose in front of Greg Steele's house upon arrival in sunny California.

We had a fun afternoon Wednesday at Alison and Bruce's in Colorado. We took Alison to late lunch at the toney Wisdom Tea House in Monument. She brought us up to date on the Fort Carson Hounds (they're getting some more hounds from the Arapahoe Hunt and are probably going for registered status or farmer pack status with the MFHA) and with her Wuff-It invention (a GPS dog collar that has applications in the hunt field with a virtual fence that can see which hounds are on riot and which ones are out of place when working and running), which is selling well.

 We loaded up Wednesday afternoon and got away by 5:30 p.m. (4:30 PCT). We took the I-25 to I-470 (loop road south of Denver) to the I-70 westbound. We could see storm clouds rolling in from the west, but I pressed on, with no idea how it would affect the trip, the mood, and the muses.

Kit (foreground) and Ali munch hay in the shadow of Mount Herman near Colorado Springs.

After a great day and nice early dinner with Mo and Jeannie Trail in Kansas, we were back on the road at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday evening. Kit and Ali had their dinner on-board (loaded up without complaint) and tucked into their hay as we headed out. They were like travel professionals. We, too. We had it down to a science: packing, loading, stopping every three to four hours for refueling (whether we needed it or not).

At the stops I start fueling, then carry the girls a snack (sloppy wet beet pulp) and refresh their hay and water. Every time I looked in on them they were cool customers, not a hair out of place, happy to eat, drinking well, interested but not loopy.

I'd gotten four brand new tires while in Paola to hopefully prevent more road-heat blowouts. The tire guy said my tires, while in good enough shape for winter hauling (mostly what I do), were not up to the relentless summer trip we embarked upon.

John Rera and Mo Trail, our first stop-over host, pose with the evidence.

The eternal query—where does the rubber meet the road?—was definitively answered at the witching hour last night. It meets the road in Beckley, West Virginia. And in East St. Louis. Let me explain.

We've embarked on the quintessential road-trip, my friend Beth Rera, her young son John, and I. We’re traversing the nation, literally, from coast to coast over an eighteen-day period.

I'd been charged with delivering some horses from the East Coast to the Santa Barbara area of California. I also picked up a job to ship some furniture from Middleburg to its owner in Albuquerque, and some stuff' for the return trip back east. It's sort of the tale that creates road legend, this nearly 6,000-mile journey crossing the spine of the U.S.

We're stopping along the route westbound with friends (I-70 route, primarily) and eastbound at several commercial horse hotels (I-40 route.) It is a three- to four-day journey no matter what, each way, with forty-five-plus hours of driving in each direction. I like to think of it as a twenty-first century variation on Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie. Beth likens it to a version of Thelma and Louise minus the man-hating aspect. John considers it the opportunity of his seven-year life: the ultimate show-and-tell for the first-day of school next month.