Find your "angry man voice"!

For many of you who have come to camp with guest groups or as a camper in summer, you've no doubt come on a trail ride. As you've probably experienced you walk down to the barn on a bright sunny day (or maybe rainy, or snowy depending on when you come), sit through a very informative pre-ride, grab a helmet (gotta protect those noggins, am I right?), wait eagerly as horses get assigned, finally get to mount your horse, and then you're off! What you may not know is all of the behind the scenes action that goes on before you even get to the barn and after you leave. We would love to invite you to walk through a day in the life of a wrangler!

The day usually starts with the ever unpleasant ringing of your alarm in the wee hours of the morning (sometimes as early as 6am...geh), rolling out of bed and then out the door to walk down to the barn – this often requires walking through a tunnel of darkness then emerging out into the open field in front of the barn. You are usually greeted by the other wranglers as you approach the barn and the constant meows from Prince and Ember (our mouse hunting kitties) to be fed. Then you're off to herd in the horses, which requires using your deepest and angriest man voice (especially if you're a girl) to get the horses moving across the field. On the plus side, as you herd you get to see the amazing sun rise that paints the sky. Once you're back at the barn with all of the horses it's time to bring in the trail string – which are the horses that you, our guests get to ride – and get them ready for the day. As you might have guessed, getting 15-20 horses ready every day can be quite the task and can get pretty repetitive day after day. To keep things entertaining - we might have races as we pick, brush, and saddle. Things can get pretty competitive when it comes to getting the horses ready, but it just means that we can get done faster and head off to eat some much deserved breakfast.

After breakfast, we get ready for the actual trail ride. This means bridling and muzzling all of the horses (the muzzles are so that they don't eat all of the grass that they see, otherwise it would be a trail stand instead of a trail ride). While bridling the horses, some of them like to pretend to be giraffes and see how high up they can stick their head, which results in wranglers on tip toes trying to reach their face. We eagerly await your arrival so that we can give you the best pre-ride ever, often getting you to demonstrate on your imaginary horses. Once all of you are up and we're on our way, our job morphs into making sure that you get the best ride ever either by telling funny stories or by playing games such as pass the stick. After you have departed and the day is done we begin to untack the horses, which usually means another race to see who can untack the most horses. This can end up in quite the traffic jam with wranglers backing horses into other wranglers trying to get in front of them and then trying to persuade Alf to actually trot so that they can win. Remember that deep angry man voice? That's got to come out again to herd the horses back out to the field. The ride back often involves trying all kinds of shennangins on the way back such as riding side-saddle, backwards, or standing on your horse (please don't try this at home). The last race has been happening during herding. The wranglers left back at the barn try to clean as fast as possible so that they can beat those who are herding. When the day is all done we head back to the lodge. Wash, rinse, and repeat (a.k.a. do it all over again tomorrow). 

Faves herding on Cruz (is the Wrangler guilty of
distracted riding?!?)

Now you may be thinking...that sounds like a lot of work and not a whole lot of fun. Or maybe you're feeling sceptical and want some photo evidence of all the shennangins that we do at the barn. Well do I have great news for you! You can check out the barns very own Instagram account at @evergreen_barn (not tobe confused with our other Instagram account: @camp_evergreen) where we post photographic proof of all the crazy things that we do. Plus if you've ever wondered what the horses are thinking, you can read the texts from the herd where you'll get a completely accurate first hand account of what the members of our herd or thinking and feeling. So head on over and check it out for yourselves! We'll be waiting to see you all out at the barn throughout the whole year come rain or shine or snow or sleet!

Love Faves (Kathrina)