First, I have to say that this post is not directly related to Calvin. In fact, I haven't seen him in a week and I miss that little boy! Why I haven't seen him though is because I went to Northern CA for a wedding this past weekend. As usual, Northern CA was absolutely beautiful this time of year.
Cliché driving over the Golden Gate bridge picture! SF is one of my absolute favorite cities
What are all these green things? Driving through Sonoma
NorCal is much more horse friendly, but I was surprised to see this bad boy in my janky hotel's (really...the hotel was awful but that's another story) parking lot. What is a CWD trailer you might ask? Oh, they just sell $5,000 saddles, no big deal. They cart this trailer around because when you're willing to drop a down payment on a saddle, they come to you (or set up at horse shows) and customize the saddle to your horse. Needless to say, I was very tempted to hitch up and take off.
The wedding venue, to my surprise, was actually held at a horse farm. I use the term "farm" loosely here as it was more like an estate. In other words--my dream horse facility. Between the ceremony and the reception, I was able to wander on the property and snap a few pics of the facility. I also managed to take pics of some gorgeous stallions, because if there are horses, I will find them.
View from the wedding area: the far right of the picture shows a roof, that is a covered arena. To the left are three large day pastures. You could hear the horses neigh during the ceremony, so cute!
Even more pastures, Calvin would think he'd died and gone to heaven.
This indoor arena was literally five feet from the cocktail hour. Now this is arena is super fancy, other than the obvious beautiful beams and killer arena footing. Notice it has mirrors on the right and the walls are slanted so your horse can't smash your leg into the side, these are things us commoners dream of! Note: this is a different arena than previous picture. Yes, that makes TWO covered arenas alone...it doesn't even rain that much in CA.
The outdoor dressage court--breathtaking.
This stable specialized in Iberian and Boroque (Spanish) horses. Needless to say, I was drooling. The stallion barn was next to the reception area, so I "got lost" and found these guys:
This guy was very friendly! Note: grass hay (yay!) and 3 feedings a day, not bad at all.
Gorgeous!
So you're probably thinking, "this place must be obscenely expensive." Well, depends on what you're used to. Pasture starts at $420/month, regular board $600, stallion barn $700. This is "average" for my current location which means that if this facility was located where I live, it would probably start at $600/month for pasture and go up from there. I guess if you live anywhere that has land in abundance, then this is expensive. But when land is at a premium, you pay more to house a
No comments:
Post a Comment