Snake River Drafts

Cambridge, Idaho

Keep checking back for our Fall 2009 Ride & Drive

Details:

Meet at Washington County Faigrounds

We will start the day with an in hand trail course, then a ridden or driven obstacle challenge before we start out on the trail.  This event is at your own pace- IT IS NOT A TIMED EVENT!   

We are dividing this event up into 3 categories; Large, Minis and Children. 

We will have Saddle Horses, Mules and Draft Horses start out on the course first both driving and riding.  You will be required to go farther and pick up 7 cards for your hand.  Your course will be about 8 miles roundtrip.

We will then start sending the Mini Horses out next.  You will pick up 5 cards for your hand.  Your loop will be 2 miles up and 2 miles back for a total of 4 miles.

Last we will send out the children and any adults who want to follow their children for the 4 mile loop.

Our start time will be 11AM and we want to be back for dinner by 4PM.

Entry Fees are to be broken down as follows:

$5.00 for Weiser River Trail, $5.00 for Jackpot Prizes for the Poker Run and $15.00 for BBQ Dinner Buffet, for a total of $25.00 for Horse and Driver or Rider.

Passengers will be $15.00 to pay for their dinner.

Children under 16 will be $10.00 to pay for their dinner.

Prizes to be Awarded:

Best Hand, Worst Hand, Sportsmanship Award & Hard Luck Award

NO DOGS ALLOWED ON TRAIL!!!

On October 12^th, 2008, 46 friends came out to play on the Weiser River Trail.  It all came about when Randy Roberts came to Susan Marler and me (Shawnda Kasma) to plan a play day along the trail.  We put this event together in a very short period of time and it turned out to be a huge success.  We met only once to plan this day.  During our meeting, we decided we wanted to have a relaxing and enjoyable time riding and driving our equines.  We did not want to limit it to just people driving carts or to riders on horseback.  A lot of events do not allow the minis and the larger horses to participate together.  Randy has mules, Susan has minis and I have draft horses.  We wanted an event that all could participate in with no pressure of being judged, no pressure of completing the course in a certain time, just bring what you own and have fun!  We wanted to play games, set up an obstacle course and then have a nice meal afterwards.  We came up with what we hope is the first of many activities.  For this first event, the Fall Drive or Ride Poker Run & Play Day, we thought we might get about 20-25 people to show up.  We would start out at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Cambridge, Idaho, do a 4 mile loop and then return for a nice hot meal.  Randy contacted Mrs. G’s restaurant in Cambridge, Idaho to set up our prime rib dinner buffet.  I started on the flyers and advertising of the event and Susan was in charge of registration.  

The day before the event, Southwestern Idaho had some nasty weather come through, rain and gusty winds were threatening to put a damper on our day.  We were a little skeptical if the weather was going to hold, if people would actually show up, could this type of event be pulled off in such a short period of time?  Both Susan and I live in Parma, so we loaded up our trucks and trailers and headed to Cambridge hoping for the best. About 10 miles away from our destination, Susan’s vehicle stalled on the roadside.    My husband (Jeff Kasma) and I picked her up and headed to the fairgrounds.  We had planned on arriving early to set up the obstacle course (which was now left on the side of the road with Susan’s trailer) and the registration booth.  When we arrived, we pulled into the fairgrounds and there were trailers everywhere.  There must have been at minimum, 80 rigs in the parking lot.  We got a little scared- we had only made reservation for 50.  It only took us a few moments of panic to realize- there was a high school rodeo event going on in the arena.  Not all of these rigs were there for our event.  We then located Randy and his daughter Molly in their R.V. and began to unload the supplies for the day.  Jeff had to unhitch our trailer and go back with Susan to pick up her trailer.  In the meantime, we signed up the participants (41 adults and 5 children), saddled and harnessed our animals, dressed ourselves in our winter survival gear, while other volunteers had gone out on the trail and dropped off the poker cards.  The first group of riders went out about 12:15pm.  The only problem we had the whole day was that we all dressed for really bad weather, layers of clothing, long underwear, wool pants, gloves, etc. and the weather turned out beautiful.  People were taking off clothing and tying it on their saddles before the first bridge.  We set up 2 separate return posts for the participants.  The minis went out to a 2 mile post and could return and the larger animals went out to a 4 mile post.  Many riders went beyond the 4 mile post to make the entire loop over 10 miles.  Along the trail, you had to get off your animal or out of your cart and pick up a sealed envelope with your poker card in it.  You had to collect 5 cards for the entire day, keep them sealed and bring them to the dinner to play your hands out. 

When everyone returned from the ride, Susan had an obstacle course set up for people to play with their equines.  She had stuffed animals that were sheep in a pen, a white metal Christmas reindeer yard art figure, stop signs, blue tarps and more.  It was fun to see the horses you knew would not be bothered at all get nervous and the ones you thought were an accident waiting to happen, breeze right through the course.  After everyone had a good laugh, we unsaddled and unharnessed our animals and headed to Mrs. G’s for dinner.  

Randy was our host for the poker tournament/awards dinner.  We had everyone open up their sealed envelopes to reveal the poker hand they would be playing with.  I had the highest poker hand with four 5’s but I was not the winner.  We went with the worst hand for the day as the big winner of $50.00.  It was a lot of fun getting to the worst hand.  Randy slowly weeded out the top hands down to the worst by having us throw our cards into the center of the table if we had more than a pair, then down to each face value until he had 3 or 4 players with no cards over an 8.  We then calculated their final score and gave the prize to the winner with the worst hand.  It was fun!  We then had a couple of silly awards for the Oldest Participant, the Participant who came the farthest, Sportsmanship Award, the Horse who was the most behaved (whom we were told we did not get see how it had acted up and everyone laughed) and we had prizes for the children.  As part of this event, we raised $100.00 to donate to the Friends of the Weiser River Trail.  All in all, it was a fabulous time had by all and we look forward to the next time we can get together again on the Weiser River Trail.