We had a great time at the combined 61+1 MTRA/MHTA event at Goose Creek in August. Thank you so much to all who joined us, we hope you enjoyed your time as much as we did. We don’t have an exact number of attendees, but 75+ riders joined us. Special thanks to the volunteers who made this weekend GO!!! We had a breakfast, two potlucks, crafts, tubing, horseback riding, auctions, and a bingo ride and for the riders to enjoy. We offered educational courses on Ramblr, Avenza and were treated to a Saddle Fit Demo from Kianna Ryan of K&K Saddlery. The kids who joined us kept the camp lively and they tired out the camp dogs while we were too busy to.

One last highlight of the weekend, our newly appointed Non-Motorized Trails Coordinator for the DNR Dave Merk and his wife Jen, camped with us for a night. They are trail riders but are new to camping with horses and they came to check it all out. We hope to see them at more of the events and on the trails. Dave has been one of the very busy ice storm trail damage accessors this year and I’ve been working with him to prioritize assessments for our horse trails on the East side of the state which were hit very hard by the storm. He will soon be ready to tackle larger non-motorized trail issues like maintenance, signage and funding and MHTA will be here to work with him and Michigan’s horse trail volunteers on that.