It's cold!

Hey everyone! After hours and hours of watching horses school, we are back at the hotel. It's still super cold outside, and unfortunately not much better inside the Alltech Arena where the show will be held.

For those of you who haven't been here, the horse park is beautiful.We didn't get to see much of it today, but what we did see as we were driving in was gorgeous; green as could be, with rolling hills and long stretches of white fencing. It's obviously rained a lot here, as many of the paddocks had lakes in them, and the stream that runs through the park was full almost to flooding, and moving rather swiftly.

The Alltech Arena is similar to the Coliseum at the Virginia Horse Center, only... nicer. It's larger, with so many more seats, but it has the similar set up with the concourse which you can walk around and buy many different things. Der-Dau has a booth, as well as many IHSA souvenir stands. I'm sure there will be even more to see tomorrow - everyone was just getting set up today.

Each of the riders got sweet backpacks, with all sorts of goodies inside - water bottles, shoe shining kits, socks, magazines, more chap stick, hats, etc.

We're here! All the riders... minus Corrie. Where did Corrie go while this was being taken? We'll have to take another one.

So we watched horse after horse after horse jump around the course, with many of them schooling around several times. The horses were actually being evaluated to see which ones the show will end up using. There were horses from all over; Sewanee, Virginia Intermont, Centenary, and Hollins all brought several, as well as a couple other schools or private owners. Hollins must have brought a whole truck-full; we recognized a lot of their horses as ones that our riders have ridden in the past or who they brought over for Zones. After the horses jumped, we watched a bunch of them flat. And when I say a bunch, I mean a whole bunch. Huge groups of horses. We all sat there and picked out which horses we thought each of our riders should pull :-) Now we just have to get Geo to work  her magic to make sure they pull those horses!

Watching flat horses

That's all for right now! Everyone decided we were very tired, so we're skipping the museum today, but we're going to try and go to it tomorrow in the afternoon, once everyone is done showing. Oh! They have western events here too, and we're all really excited to get to watch some of the open reining events! It should be fun.