Ladies riding trip to Ocala

Anticipating the cold and icy weather coming up in January and February, I texted Lisa a casual inquiry “do you want to go down to Ocala, Florida and ride with trainers?” This seemingly preposterous proposal was answered with an enthusiastic “yes!”. As an aside, Lisa is the most enthusiastic yet easy going travel partner. I have a great memory of riding bicycles (which were left for us the previous day in a bike rack downtown) in a dark and cold morning in Maisons-Lafitte, France, after Ubering from Paris, to deliver croissants to my daughter and her crew who were exercising racehorses at the training center 3 miles from where we were dropped off. We thought it was great fun although the croissants suffered a bit during transport. Ah memories. Anyway, this whole Ocala idea originated from Buck Davidson, with whom I had taken a clinic in Colorado. He said, “sure you can come down to Ocala, I’ll put you on some horses and you can ride.” Well then, I thought, why can’t we go down and ride with Buck and some other trainers and be in warm weather? The positive “vibes” (although no commitments) from other trainers was encouraging enough for us to make plans for a 10 day stay in Ocala. Even if we did not ride with any trainers, what is the worst that could happen? We are in the warm weather and see manatees and go boogie boarding at the eastern shore? We will take it!

Our flight was direct from Denver and went very smoothly. We had two major challenges: packing our equestrian gear including boots and helmets and taking enough food to allay our hunger-pang anxieties. Both of us have metabolisms like hummingbirds (perhaps b/c of our generally busybody, high strung natures? Oh wait, no that’s just me) and so we need to carry food just in case. And by food we mean calorie dense foods like fruit covered chocolate, with just enough veggies to make us feel better about ourselves.

Our drive from the airport to Citra, Florida took us through the outskirts of Ocala where we drooled  over horse farm after horse farm with long beautiful 3 and 4-rail creosote coated wood fences, jump courses, arenas, large paddocks and fancy barns.  As we headed towards our Airbnb we drove down lanes of huge old oak trees covered in Spanish moss. 

Our airbnb in Citra, FL was perfect for us. It was a barn/garage converted to a lovely living space with a wonderful on-site host named Catherine. Her place is also a small scale animal sanctuary and currently houses two foster horses named ChiChi (sp?) and Biscuit. As it turned out, Citra is at the heart of horse country, and we were no more than 12 minutes away from any of our riding destinations

Catherine was a truly compassionate person. She informed us that because the Ocala area is a mecca of training, breeding, and showing, it also has a proportional number of abandoned horses (the dirty underbelly of the horse industry). So she provides foster care for some of the area rescues.