Trail Riding
Dawson Forest is owned by the City of Atlanta and managed by the Georgia Forest Commission. There are over 10,000 acres in Dawson Forest and it has three trails. Two are seven miles long and the Blue Trail is 13 miles long. There is parking at the entrance. You must pay a $5 daily use fee or a $50 annual use fee for parking. If you do not have a trailer, Sunrise Stables can arrange transportation for your horse.
July 30, 2007, Dawson Forest - Again in the forest! This time we had a birthday party, Stephanie is now 14. You can see in the photos that the birthday girl had too much fun at her forest party so she had to take a nap on Brave Heart. Obviously Samantha should have taken a nap too because she ended up riding Skip backwards. The only photo of Ace is in the lower left of the first picture. If his ears were in the forest, the rest of him was there too!
October 9, 2005, Dawson Forest - This has become a family tradition of taking Pete and Samantha to the forest before each show to allow Pete to relax from all the training in the ring. With his background as a trail horse in the Montana mountains, Pete seems to really enjoy getting in the woods. You can bet that Samantha and Dad enjoy it too! This is Flex's second trip to Dawson Forest since having his shoes removed and he still gets a little tender by the end of the ride. He likes to ride in the brush on the side of the trail which makes for some interesting riding when the limbs of the trees come at you at a cantor.
Mother Nature provided some jumping opportunities this trip.
This is Samantha and Pete's favorite part of the Dawson Forest experience. We call it the "run to the barn". They usually take this up hill section at a gallop. Today the trail was a little slick from all the rain and Pete did not want to move any faster than a cantor. The picture is a little blurry because the photographer is trotting up the hill behind them.
September 28, 2005, Dawson Forest - This was Connor's first trail ride and he did great! He is young and tends to see a troll behind every bush so it was a great surprise to see how well he handled riding in the forest. By the end of the ride he had settled down and was even taking the lead. It began to rain about half way into the ride and the trial became extremely slippery. A typical two hour ride ended up taking three hours because the horses were tippie-toeing down the mountain on the way home. Flex lost his rear footing at one point and almost went down in the mud but he saved the photographer at the last second. This was Flex's first trip into Dawson Forest as a barefoot horse. By the end of the ride his feet were a little sore but he made the trip with no lameness.
Riding through Dawson Forest August, 2005. This was the first trip that we took Rocky and Flex. Rocky behaved very well but Flex was a different story. The race horse in him came out and he refused to settle down in any position other than the lead.
We weighed all four horses before and after the trail ride and they all lost about 30 pounds in the 100 degree heat. We took the short blue loop and were only in the forest for two and a half hours. Man it was HOT! We all had a great time in spite of the heat.
Riding through Dawson Forest in March 2005
Riding through Dawson Forest in December 2004