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[RC] Wickenburg - Land of the Sun - Steph Teeter

What a great ride!! The entire town of Wickenburg turns out to support
thiside - 100+ volunteers, mounted posse, sherrifs, 4-H, etc. Perfect
weather - cold in the morning but warming up to mid-60's in the afternoon. A
fantastic trail! Fairly technical - lots of rocky sections and sand washes
(although volunteers rake a lot of the trail before the ride!), plenty of up
and down, tons of single track trail, and always interesting. The Sonoran
desert is so beautiful with the saguaro cactus, palo verde trees, acacia,
nasty nasty cholla, barrel cactus, an incredible variety of plant life -
really gorgeous scenery. Lots of little canyons to ride through, it was
never a boring trail. The vetchecks had volunteers to hold horses while they
ate their warm bran/carrot mashes. Buffet food for the riders, friendly
smiling folks everywhere. Awards dinner with a live country band, plenty of
food and drink. Wonderful awards, just a fantastic ride!

A group of us rode together all day, determined to take our time and enjoy
the scenery. Adele Youmans and Dream Weaver (the 20yr old mustang) were our
Pardner's Award celebrities, Wynne Brown (wearing a 10 year old Endurance
Net sweatshirt:) - who has written books about Arizona - pioneer women, and
currently writing about horse trails in Arizona - very knowlegeable on the
vegetation and ecology, Heidi Vanderbilt from south of Tucson, longtime
friend of Bazy Tankersly (Al-Marah) . I rode Heidi's horse (to see how we
got along, maybe with the idea of campaigning him for a bit) and she rode a
young horse that I'm bringing along. And John rode the mighty Khruschev! We
all had great rides, good company, horses did wondefully. A very pleasant
day.

Hopefully we'll be back back again for this one next year! The ride manager
Robin Ollendeck started the ride in order to save the Wickenburg trails that
cross state land. Much of the state land in Arizona is being sold to
developers, especially in the growing regions, and a lot of the trails are
being lost. But the sale (commercialization) of the land is contingent upon
it not being 'used' by the population. The Endurance ride put the state
parcels with the developed trails into the 'being used' category, so it is
no longer elegible for sale and development!

Thanks Bruce and Dana for a nice dinner the night before - some good stories
swapped.

And thanks again to all of the folks that put this ride on!

Steph


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