Part I. 2017 HITS Coachella – the drive
February 17, 2017 – My horse show helper, Danielle, and I packed 3 horses, a 10 week old puppy, and a baby bunny into my 4 horse trailer and started our drive down to the desert, encountering a lot along the way to put our coping skills to the test.
The drive through WA and OR was quite lovely and problem-free. We stopped for diesel a couple of times, stopped at a couple of rest stops for the puppy, and mostly enjoyed the rare day of sun after many months of a wet and miserable winter. Crossing into California, however, brought quite the surprise – RAIN! But in the daylight the rain wasn’t bad, and we kept chuckling about the irony of coming from the sunny NW into rainy CA.
We made it halfway over the Siskiyous before the sun set and the combination of what had turned into torrential rains (really, torrential – as in I-5 was flooded the next morning, wreaking havoc on everyone) and pitch black made the drive an absolute white-knuckle experience and the 2 hours it should have taken to get from Redding to Sacramento/UC Davis stretched into 4. I was extremely grateful to have three calm horses on board who were perfectly content with their full hay nets and water buckets and blissfully unaware of the awful driving conditions!
We finally pulled into UC Davis, road weary and exhausted, at 9pm and proceeded to drive down the wrong road (thank you, Google Maps), causing us to back up half a mile down one-lane road with a barbed wire fence on one side and a drop-off on the other in my truck and 4H Gooseneck trailer (and did I mention the combination of pitch-blackness and pouring down rain?!). At this point we were also getting low on diesel, which added to the air of anxiety. But a mere 90 minutes of backing fun brought us to the barns where we got the horses unloaded and settled safely. We then attempted to park the trailer in the “dry lot” (I’m sure you can see where this is going) and ended up mired hopelessly in the mucky mud, courtesy of the freakish rain storm. Big sigh. We called “uncle!” on the night and had a Lyft driver transport us to a hotel and attempted to get some rest (cue sitcom-ish moment of hesitation when the Lyft driver noticed the 10 week old Bernese Mountain Dog in my arms).
One of the farm workers managed to tow us out with a giant tractor the next morning, my USRider’s insurance policy provided a can of diesel, and we were back on the road by 10am, no worse for the wear. And on board with us was the new mare who had just cleared her 2 week mare quarantine at UC Davis for a full 4 horse load in the trailer for part II of the trip. We were both extremely grateful that the mare clearly got the memo to go easy on us, and loaded up without issue. And another moment of fortuitousness came when one of the UC Davis employees fell in love with the bunny and gave her a home that most bunnies only dream of (including vacations with the family, a victorian-era mansion…er…hutch, and siblings in the form of dogs).
The next day brought the second half of the trip, and once again we made the driving portion with little to no issue, but hit chaos upon arrival at the Thermal showgrounds. Once again our arrival coincided with sunset, and we realized that the show had not delivered hay nor shavings, 3 of our stalls had been reconfigured into 2 stall-and-a-halves, and 2 of our other stalls were missing doors! We made the best with what we had, and with some baling twine and ingenuity, managed to get all of the horses “locked” (in one form or another) into stalls. The next morning brought a lot of scrambling around to fix all of the problems, but by the end of Sunday afternoon we were all settled in and ready to start our 3 weeks in the desert sun.
Never have I been so happy to unpack and prepare for a competition!