Last week, Part 1 of this series detailed some funny and nightmarish road trip stories. Part 2 concentrates more on truck and trailer breakdowns on the highway and the challenges of trying to get to and from our beloved horse shows.
During these challenging times, we probably wonder why we show horses, but after it’s over, it turns into a humorous story that we share through the years.
If you have shown horses enough, you have probably broken down multiple times on the side of the road. Usually, our fellow horsemen come and save us from our predicament.
If you have any memorable road trip stories to horse shows, please share them with us.
Lauren Stanley – One year, my family was heading back to the Youth World with my dad’s shiny new toy, a mini Freightliner. He had his eye on it for quite a while and finally decided to get one. What better way to break it in than on our way to the Youth World? Since we were traveling from California, we had three days of traveling in that truck to look forward to. We started off great, it drove like a dream, and you could hardly feel any of the potholes on the California highways. My dad had the biggest smile on his face as it took the steep grades with ease, it was everything he dreamed of. We stopped in Kingman, Arizona (about 7 hours into our trip) to get some lunch and to water the horses. As we went to start the truck back up, it made a weird noise and then went quiet. Well, that couldn’t be good! My dad jumped out and opened up the hood to see that it had eaten up and destroyed a critical part of the motor and wasn’t going to be finishing our trip. My dad was devastated, and we ended up naming the truck “The Titanic” since it sank on our maiden voyage. My grandpa was kind enough to drive out our old vehicle, so we could use it to take us the rest of the way. We eventually sold The Titanic, and that old truck is still taking us down the road with no problems.
Libby Rinder – We were coming into St. Louis when we blew a tire on the trailer, so we went to pull off the highway and end up pulling over right in front of the park where the St. Louis Arch is at about 5 in the morning. We were in the process of changing the tire when we realized that the tire next to it leaked, so as we’re trying to change the tire, the other tire is deflating so we can’t get the trailer high enough to get the new tire on. A road crew truck ended up stopping and helping us by lifting the whole back end of the trailer so that we could get the tire on and the leaking one off while we waited for a second tire to be dropped off. Then, on the drive home, we were again just outside of St. Louis when we pulled over to switch drivers and noticed that one of the tires was smoking. We realized it was one of the ball bearings on the trailer wheel that was at risk of catching on fire. We parked ourselves in the gas station parking lot, and, luckily, Mark Harrell’s place was only about 30 minutes away, and he sent friends to come pick the horses up and saved us. Then, we spent two days there waiting to get the trailer fixed. It was the trip where everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Thankfully, we had great people on both sides of the journey who came to our rescue.
Elizabeth “Spike” Brewer – In the late 90’s, I talked one of my friends into helping me drive to the APHA World Show in Ft Worth. This was back when it was just one show and always notoriously hot, hot, hot. We were both excited about our trip and were rolling along when all the sudden our A/C went out in our truck. We stopped a few places, but no one had the parts to fix it, so needless to say, we made the entire trip with no A/C. We had all the windows down driving from Ohio to Texas, and back. Our highlight was at one point; we felt so gross, we stopped at a clean looking truck stop and rented a shower room. We got a lot of looks from the other truck drivers, but we felt rejuvenated and ready to finish our trip.
Sarah Elder Chabot – I rolled into Oklahoma City Fairgrounds 15 minutes before the tornado touched down a couple of years ago. Don and Karen Mundy and our entire crew came out to unload the horses, a bale of hay and buckets. I drove the rig around to barn three pulled it into the arena to get it out of the hail. We bunkered down in the bathrooms with everyone. Once the storm passed, I found out my trailer and truck was flooded up to the running boards in soft arena dirt and water. The next morning I got up at five and found the tractor/arena guys to help me pull it out. The site was a national disaster, and the show was canceled. I turned around the next day and drove home. A quick trip to The Redbud.
Alyse Roberts – In 2012, Courtney Brockmuller and I were headed from Scottsdale, Arizona to the Silver Dollar Circuit in Las Vegas. We took her trailer, and on the way there about 3 or so hours into our trip, the bearings blew out on her trailer with six head on I believe. We were fortunate enough to have some good friends of hers come to our rescue and let us take their trailer on to Vegas. It was a pain unloading and loading all our tack, show stuff and horses, but we made it to Vegas safe and sound. On the return home, again somewhere in the middle of nowhere it seemed, we blew the bearings out in their trailer. One of my customers came and rescued us again and got us home. It was quite the trip, but we were so thankful to have great people and friends to help us out and get us back on the road. We were having some bad luck that week with the trailer bearings.
Hilary Reinhard – When I was a youth, my mom and I were driving home on a Sunday evening after a horse show in Watsonville. We had dropped off another horse at the show, so we had an empty two horse trailer that we were hauling. The sun was setting, and we were driving through the hills and hit terrible traffic. Up ahead, there was a smoking motorhome that was hooked to a two horse trailer with two horses in it. It didn’t look good. We pulled over since we had an empty trailer. A husband and wife had been hauling home from the Rose Parade when their motor home caught on fire. We offered to haul the horses. Meanwhile, the fire in the motorhome is getting bigger. Amazingly, the horses handled the flames, smoke and freeway traffic as we loaded them into our trailer. The wife jumped in with us, and we sat three across in our single cab dodge. The husband stayed behind with the now fully engulfed motorhome. We pulled out just as the firetrucks showed up. We had no idea where we would take the horses since we were still three hours away from our house, but at least they were safe. We get down the road, and the wife realizes two of any horsewomen’s worst nightmares. Her purse and her expensive custom sidesaddle outfits she had brought for the parade were in the motorhome. One of the CHP officers put us in contact with an officer who lived in Merced that could house the horses. So, we drove through the dark with our cargo. We rolled into the officer’s house at around 10 pm. We dropped the horses and the woman off. We hugged her and drove home. We pulled into our driveway at about 1 am. It was fate that we happened to drive by with an empty trailer at the right time, and we were thankful that we were able to help.
Blake Carney – My worst travel nightmare would have to be heading to Camden, South Carolina about six years ago. I had six horses on the trailer and another rig behind that one. We had only made it about an hour down the road and in downtown Atlanta traffic when the clients behind me called and told me I had lost a wheel.
Keep in mind when you lose a wheel, you also lose all the lugnuts and most of the studs and bolts. I would know…this was the second time it had happened. So, we pull off into a mall parking lot where there were two tire stores, and neither would help because I had horses on. So, we pull into some shade and start making calls for repair, but because we are in downtown there just weren’t a lot of people willing to mess with a trailer with horses in it.
We were an hour away from home for almost eight hours, and once we finally found someone willing, he left for hours looking for the parts. Eventually, a client and I got in her car and went and bought everything we needed ourselves. By the time it was all over, I just turned around and went home. We wouldn’t have gotten to the show until after 11 pm on a Friday, so it was just a big mess. I always leave for shows an extra day early just in case, but I didn’t that day, and it was a big mistake.
Kari Craft – This past March, my trainer, Jason English decided he wanted to head up north for a show in Cloverdale, Indiana. It was 75 degrees in Georgia and beautiful warm weather, and in Indiana, it was calling for highs in the 30s and snow, but I just went along with it thinking the weather couldn’t be that bad. I usually don’t drive my motorhome more than eight or nine hours alone, so when Jason said it was about a 7-hour drive, I thought, oh well that’s no big deal. So, the day I was leaving, I typed in the address in my GPS, and sure enough, it said 10 hours, but the horses were already there, so I had no choice other than to ask Jason what he was thinking, and, then, head on my way.
So, I start driving, and I’m in Kentucky or Ohio or somewhere like that, and my gas light comes on, so I start to panic because I never let my gas get low in the motorhome, much less have the gas light come on. So I’m driving and driving and driving looking for a gas station and nothing. Nothing for at least 36 miles. So, eventually, I pull off the interstate because if I’m going to run out of gas, I’d rather it be off the interstate than on it. I text Jason and tell him that he will probably have to get me because I’m actually out of gas. So by now, I’m in a full sweat because I know this thing is going to run out of gas, and I’m on the phone with my mom in a panic, thinking she might be able to save me when the thing starts to putter.
Then, finally, I see a gas station. I barely get that thing in there, but sure enough “the Minnie” pulled through. I got out and opened the gas tank to fill up, and the thing pops open and starts hissing at me, “phhssssssssssssssssssssssss…” She was running on fumes, so I wipe the sweat off, in 30-degree weather, and start to fill up and that gas keeps pumping and pumping.
In the meantime, I hear this clop clop clop going down the road, and I have no idea what that sound is, then, I look, and an Amish horse and buggy is going down the road. What?! Literally, I was in the middle of nowhere, so the gas keeps pumping and finally stops at 49.5 gallons. That motorhome holds 50 gallons of gas. I had a half gallon to go. I mean, I gave that motorhome a mighty fine pat on the back for pushing through until I found a station.
So I start going again, text Jason to tell him I’m okay and that I’ll be there in an hour, then, my GPS takes me down this gravel road, and, later another gravel road, and then the gravel roads don’t end. This motorhome is just be-bopping along down this road, having no idea where I am, and, then, it starts snowing. We left 75-degree weather to get lost in a snowstorm, so 2.5 hours later, I end up at the horse show.
It took 14 hours for me to get somewhere that should have taken less than 10. I pulled in to that horse show, and one of our barn dads backed me in and hooked me up while I just stood there in the snow. I’m almost positive Jason will never get me to that show again, and I made sure I followed them the whole way back home after that. I’ll go back to limiting my driving time to 8 hours after that trip.
Ariel Herrin – My mom, dad and I were on the way to the Youth World the first year it was in Oklahoma City in 2008. My mom was driving, my dad was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back seat, anxiously awaiting our arrival.
Now keep in mind, my dad is not a horse person and is 6’6″ and was about 300 pounds, so he didn’t comfortably “fit” in the truck for the many hours it took to get to Oklahoma. Thus, he was probably the readiest to be out of the truck. We were about an hour out, barring any major difficulties, and we were more than prepared to get there.
My mom looked in the rearview mirror and (relatively calmly) says, “There goes our wheel…” One of the trailer tires, axel and all, had come off the trailer and was bouncing across many lanes of traffic well into the distance.
We tried to track it down, but it was long gone. We did see that it cleared all the traffic without hitting any vehicles, but after that, we couldn’t find it. We ended up limping the trailer all the way to the show, adding an extra two hours to our trip. We were all so excited to finally get there after what had to be the longest “final hour” of the trip.
Trista Mallow – A few years back, my fiancé, Travis, and I decided we wanted to add one more mare to our small breeding program. The next day we found a beautiful Good Machine mare for sale on Facebook with excellent broodmare potential…had to be meant to be, right? It was January, and she was in Virginia. Between Travis and I, we thought to ourselves, no big deal, that is just a day trip from Wisconsin.
So, we scheduled the visit, the weather looked great, and we jumped in the truck with the trailer. We made it to about Indianapolis when the weather started changing. By Pennsylvania, a winter storm warning was issued, and we knew we were racing the clock at that point. It is never a good feeling when the snow plows are parked on the side of the interstate just waiting. We made arrangements to see the mare that night, at midnight, hoping to beat the snowstorm home. I think we were there less than 15 minutes, bought the mare, loaded her up and hit the road. We only made it to West Virginia, of course in the mountains, when the roads became impassable.
In the near white-out conditions, we luckily found a truck stop to pull off at. Stuck in a truck, 20 plus hours later in the negative temperatures and over a foot of snow, oh and don’t forget, with a mare on the trailer we know nothing about, we made a plan to leave in the morning. We were finally getting some sleep that night until the truck’s check engine light came on and started dinging and flashing ‘Clean Exhaust Filter’. Who knew when you idle for too long your vehicle can go into low power mode, lesson learned.
From our expert googling skills, we came to the conclusion we had to start driving at a certain speed for so many miles unless we wanted a manufacturer override done. So, we hit the road once again, down the mountains on snow-covered roads. The good news was that once we were out of the mountains, the roads were clear and it was smooth sailing. But let me tell you, my jaw has never hurt so bad from gritting my teeth down that mountain and I have never wanted a shower, a clean pair of underwear and my toothbrush so bad. Thank God for Netflix and good company.
We made the 14-hour drive home, and that mare walked off that trailer like no big deal. Since then, she has produced a phenomenal yearling by RL Best Of Sudden and a gorgeous weanling by Lazy Loper. She has just checked in foal to VS Code Red, and we are anxiously awaiting what the future holds. She has made up for that 36-hour nightmare road trip.
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Do you have any funny or nightmare road trip stories to horse shows you’d like to share? Please share them in the comments section or on our Facebook Page.
About the Author: GoHorseShow writer, Emily Ambrose of Chardon, Ohio is a freshman at Kent State University. She trains under the guidance of Seth and Amber Clark from Pierpont, Ohio. Emily avidly shows her horses, Play for A Minute, known as Ralphie, who is a 12-year-old all arounder, and Super Yellow Doc, known as Doc, who is a 22-year-old ranch horse. Her love of showing has been strengthened with the support of all of her friends in the Quarter Horse community and will continue her passion through and following the completion of her college career.
