Part one my Trip to DC

I know everyone has been waiting for word our how the trip to Washington DC went.

Day one, Jan. 17th I left here with my friend Judy, from my place at 8:00 am. My brother came with his wife to haul us down to the meeting area for the entire group which was a four hour trip south to Eaton County Michigan just north of the Indiana/Michigan State borders.

At noon on the 17th we arrived at the Eaton County Sheriff’s Office and we met up with all the others. We had a short press conference and then loaded up the twenty horses in the two trailers, ten horses in each trailer. My horse Missy was the first one on, with her buddy Banjo right next to her. The trailers were open stock trailers, but the holes in the walls were blocked about 90% so though the trailer was open air it was still fairly nice for the horses. There were no dividers between most of the horses. There was a divider closed behind every fourth horse. There heads were tied to the driver side wall and the next horse placed tight next to them.

The weather was not going to co-operate with us at all. We left in a middle of a blizzard with wind chilly well below zero, but we continued and it was a slow start at the beginning. At 40 mph it took almost an hour to travel the 30 minutes to the State line.

Though the passenger vans were traveling at 40mph the shipping company did not seem to be fazed by weather conditions and got about 150 miles ahead of us. We did finally catch up with them near Toledo Ohio and the rest of the way we were able to stay in a good caravan trip formation for the remainder of the trip to Upper Marlboro Maryland where the horses were stabled.

I separated from my core Manistee Sheriff’s group and was assigned to a passenger van with three other people from three other counties, Larry from Oakland County, Leslie from Macomb County and Denise from Eaton County. We had a GREAT time. I had only met Leslie back in November when she first joined the drill team on her little Morgan mare Jezebel. As we talked back in November we found out that are horses share the same Grandsire and Jezebel was born up in Northern Michigan near me.

Leslie drove for the first two hours; the Denise took over through most of Ohio. Once in Pennsylvania Larry took the wheel which ended up being a God send because we came into the storm system that had started our trip out of Michigan and by this time had traveled east it caught us again. I was also lucky enough to have been asleep through this part of the trip. Even the livestock transports wanted to stop and check into a hotel because they felt it was getting too dangerous to continue, but we did continue and finally drove out of the weather as we traveled. I took the wheel in Central Pennsylvania and drove to Maryland, were then Larry took over and drove the rest of the way to Upper Marlboro MD. We arrived at the stables at about 8:00am Sunday Jan. 18th.

End of Part 1